Does Garmin traffic consider closures along the entire route?
|
15 years
|
I'm considering going back to a Garmin device with the new RV 890. I haven't owned a Garmin since before the nuvi devices.
I have a question about how Garmin traffic works, specifically as it relates to road closures. I'd plan to use the Smartlink traffic.
Does Garmin look ahead along the entire route for road closures, or only a certain distance ahead? I have some experience with TomTom's truck devices and TomTom only looks about 60 miles ahead for any traffic information. I understand that for traffic flow since it could change by the time you get there. TomTom relies on historical traffic beyond 60 miles. That approach makes less sense for closures.
Last year, Nebraska had severe flooding that closed most roads on the eastern side of the state. For long distance trips to Colorado from Iowa, TomTom would route you directly towards Nebraska and by the time the closures were taken into account, it was too late and getting around the closures was a nightmare. The right answer was to drop down to Kansas from Iowa.
How does Garmin handle this issue?
Well
My experience of Garmin is that it considers the whole route
Where there's a will ... there's a way ... DriveSmart51LMT-S, DriveSmart50LMT-D, Nuvi 2508LMT-D, 1490LMT, 1310, Montana 650T, Etrex 20
After the start?
I believe if a road closure occurs after you begin your route, you will be offered a detour. This is typical if there is a closure due to a major accident. In such a case, it may be that one would still get stuck in traffic if there were no exit by the time the Garmin was notified. However, it has been my experience that if the closure exists at the time the route was created, it will create the route to the destination avoiding the closure regardless of how distant.
"There's no substitute for local knowledge" nüvi 750, nüvi 3597
My only experience has been
My only experience has been an accident hours ahead of my current position and it re-routed from that point. The detour was so far ahead on my route that I did not take the detour when I got there, figuring it was cleared by that time. It was, the traffic was flowing normally. Apparently, once it re-routes you, it will never change back until you pass the detour point and it recalculates.
Thanks.
This information is helpful.
RKF (Brookeville, MD) Garmin Nuvi 660, 360 & Street Pilot
subject
My only experience has been an accident hours ahead of my current position and it re-routed from that point. The detour was so far ahead on my route that I did not take the detour when I got there, figuring it was cleared by that time. It was, the traffic was flowing normally. Apparently, once it re-routes you, it will never change back until you pass the detour point and it recalculates.
This is my experience too. If it calculates that an alternative will be longer, then it keeps you on the current route and a few minutes later it may tell you "traffic is now flowing on your current route" or something like that. But if it reroutes you, it does not recalculate unless there is some sort of trigger to recalculate (traffic again on your route or further down on your route) at which point it recalculates the entire route.
I have a DriveSmart 55 (I think) and you can tell it's thinking about recalculating because there will be a blue highlight in addition to the purple route, but it won't announce an alternative route until it recalculates the whole route and finds a better option at which point a slide in screen will pop in from the right announcing your alternative option. Sometimes it goes blue for a bit and then goes back to just the purple and I am guessing that means it tried but failed to find a better option.