Did anyone encounter "incorrect" directions from their GPS?

My routing has been solid and reliable. It has too strong a preference for major interstates, though. In Mapsource, I can "dial down" that preference, but on my 2720, I haven't been able to tweak it.

For myself, if driving on untraveled state highways is slightly slower than the interstate, I'll take it, but then my 2720 doesn't seem to know that.

But, for the record, it always gets me where I want to go - every time.

That's why they charge to use that road, man!

But seriously, your receiver was only following the route restrictions that it was instructed to observe; that is, it was giving you a big drive-around, but would have eventually gotten you there.

A combination of avoiding toll-roads, highways, speed limits, etc. inherently will tend to generate a less-than optimal route, and may even encounter a scenario where it would be impossible to establish a route for you.

I think your post makes good suggestions for GPS beginners.

Krieger

My experience is that the GPS routing is hit and miss. Sometimes it is spot on and sometimes it does really stupid things like tell me to go five miles ahead to rout back a block behind. It also has told me to take a road that turned into a dirt road then the road turned into a pig trail. There was no way to turn around or back up by the time I figured out that the GPS had sent me over an abandoned road that was still on the map and was not suitable or safe. I had to get out and walk ahead beating back brush and looking for boulders in the road that would damage the car if hit. This went on for a few miles. When I told a local what happened, they told me someone had bought the property and closed the road.

Another issue on my Nuvi 380 is that it does not have a “most use of freeways option”. I have been routed over surface streets that would have taken me over an hour to go through when I could have made it (and did) in less than 20 minutes via freeway. I see this as one of the major short comings of the Nuvi’s (other Garmin too). There is no reason to leave this feature off a high end unit when it is essential for the uniting providing its intended use.

Another issue has been that the map in the GPS doesn’t have some of the new roads or some of the old roads have been dead ended in my area.

I find myself at first trusting my GPS too much and letting it have too much of the decision process. Then I’ve doubted it and overrode it when it was spot on and I wound up screwing things up. I think the trick is to not assume it is right or wrong but rather do a sanity check on it. I suggest zooming out enough to see the “big picture” and see if it looks right.

I’ve had good days and bad days with mine. But I’ve had better days since I began to understand it's limits and understand how it works. I still wish it were smarter than it is and think it should be! I develop products in another field so I understand what they could have done if they had thought.

Sorry to say, you should always keep the avoid toll rolls unchecked unless you purposely want to do that. Your GPSr was doing exactly what you asked. My suggestion would be to view your trip on the GPSr mapview zoomed out to see the entire trip prior to starting out.

I would also suggest using the "shortest distance" setting with a lot of caution as it will put you on some pretty strange little roads in the interest of saving a few hundred feet.

Unless you are sure of the route, always zoom out and look at it. One of the biggest mistakes people make when first learning to use a gps is to blindly trust it. It's just a tool, and sometimes common sense must prevail. They do goofy things sometimes, but it was just 'following orders'.

In my Garmin Manual under avoidances it states the following.

"Place a check by the type of roads you want to avoid,
The unit will only use these road types if alternative routes will take you too far out of your way or no alternative route exists"

Based on that it seems to me the unit erred by not taking the poster on the toll road regardless of what they had checked under avoidances. JMO

Might be a bug or omission in the program. Should be submitted to Garmin.

While I was lost, I changed that setting too. I changed it from fastest time to shortest distance. But it still wanted me to travel a great deal of distance on a different route. I set it back to fastest time. It finally gave me the "best" directions after unchecking avoiding tolls. I read somewhere that fastest time was the perferable setting.

I'm trying to determine if it's my unit or if it's just a general thing other users might have experienced. A coworker of mine told me that even though I selected avoid tolls, it should not have given me a route with such a long distance. He has his GPS set to avoid tolls all the time. He drove upstate NY many times, but never encountered what I went through. He said the GPS shouldn't be that stupid. I guess I'll never now.

Like another user stated, I should have zoomed out to take a look at the map first. I also should have double checked the arrival time. When I found out that I was to arrive at my destination next day when it should have been half an hour drive, I should have known something was wrong.

But it was a good experience. I learned my lesson and now I know what to look for. I just hope it's not the unit that may be the cause of the problem.

I am a newbie when it comes to the Nuvi. I just got mine this week, but I am having a issue on the route from my home to my office. Part of the route is on restricted car pool lanes, where all lanes of the Interstate are restricted during rush hour. I do not have car pool selected in Avoidances, but when I get to the beginning of the restricted lanes on the Interstate, I am told to exit and take a different longer route. Don't know if it me or the software.

On a recent trip for my company:
1) I used my beloved C-340 to find Gerald R Ford airport in Grand Rapids,
2) Find our way from Dallas to the hotel in Oklahoma,
3) Find our hotel (on the return trip)in Dallas,
4) and also found some shopping and "good-eats" while away from home using the handy menu selection.
... maybe I'm being redundant but did I mention that I love this thing.

Folks, spread the word about these things!! What did we do without them?

My only problem has been getting bad addresses on some restaurant POI's. Twice it has led me to homes instead of businesses. One in Dallas and once in San Antonio. I'm not sure where they get the addresses, but I wonder if they get them from State files that may have the owner's home address sometimes instead of the store location. I have taken to calling the number in the POI to verify the address and that it really is the store/restaurant that I am looking for.

The individual was travelling back from Detroit to Toronto and had the "avoid tolls" checked. Needless to say, they were not impressed after driving for an hour further and further NorthWest away from the toll road instead of east towards their final destination.

I have only had positive experiences with my Garmin. Last December, I was heading south to Florida when I hit traffic in North Carolina. My trusty C330 rerouted my trip along the coast and I was able to avoid about 5 hours of bumper to bumper backlog. The same thing happened in South Carolina and the reroute actually took my by Hilton Head which was quite a scenic drive without the stress of being stuck in traffic.

There was a story in reuters Odd news about an ambulance in Britain being routed some 200 km the wrong way... I found the article on BBC- professionals using GPS have to be careful too. Boy am I glad not to be in that ambulance!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6200054.stm

I had a problem in San Francisco. My Nuvi 660 took me way out of the way to get from the pier areas to 80 East. Finally figured out I still had the thing set to Pedestrian. Nuvi was going ballistic trying to figure out how I could walk across a toll bridge. Once I changed the preferences, it worked like a charm. Garbage in - garbage out. Never more true than in this case.

I have had that kind of error. It was suggested I update my firmware (love the webupdater) and this should help, it did. I updated and it started correcting the routes.

POI information that comes from Navteq is usually obtained from Dunn and Bradstreet. The listed address is most likely the owner's residence. Speaking to Navteq, I was also told a story about a "kid" at Walmart who was filling out the request to be listed on the POI in the GPS, he put the address of the local dump. Typical goofy kid!

I had Lowrance iWay 500C for 2 years. Never had a problem although once it brought me to a gas station that was closed for a year. Now I am trying Magellan Maestro 4050 for the last two weeks - haven't encountered a problem yet. It even manages to give better directions in places I thought I new.

sorry you had to go through that.

is it possible your map is outdated? On a different note, my nuvi 350 sometimes doesn't show the routed lines when i start driving. I would have to cancel my route and start over for my nuvi to start calculating my destination again. maybe it's a bug.

I was travelling approaching interstae 395 in Conn. from Rhode Island and the voice direction then stated I was approaching interstate 695 for what ever reason . But other than that I have never had wrong information.

Thanks
Leo

I was in Nogales, Arizona on Friday. I was trying to get to a ranch off of the main road. While the roads were on the map, their location was wrong so the GPS did not know where I was and kept asking me to turn at nonexistant road locations. I zoomed out to see the local road layout and just followed the map and ignored exactly where the Nuvi thought I was. I got where I was going but it was very frustrating. I was using the v8 City Navigator; perhaps this location will be fixed in v9 but I will have no way to verify.

Your GPS is a computer.

It was designed by a human and programmed by a hum an.

It is being used by a human (hopefully).

The bottom line is HUMANS MAKE MISTAKES! Never ever rely solely on your GPS to get you somewhere.

Whenever you venture out into less than familiar surroundings, go prepared. Bring along a paper map... just in case. In addition, go on Google Maps or some similar mapping utility, and get printed instructions.

NEVER GO INTO AN AREA FOR WHICH YOU ARE COMPLETELY UNFAMILIAR!

.... just a chuckle of another encounter with wrong directions.
While looking for a good place to eat, and the obligatory nature break, Fazoli was a shoe-in to meet both of the requirements! What a great place to eat!
Anyway the directions, from the greatest invention on Earth, confirmed to the 2 brain cells in current control that relief was immediately about to be sated.
Upon entering a huge subdivision, desperation started kicking in. Where oh where did the Fazoli go? My 2 sons were laughing yet looking for a Fazoli resident!
Alternate directions, to Taco Bell, were very quickly obtained! Notch one up for experience... and a Fazoli search!

Been down a few of those roads as well.

It also has taken me to incorrect addresses that are preloaded for restaurants, and restaurants that are no longer in business (which really isn't their fault, but still is aggravating).

A few months ago while in Riverhead LI I was looking for some BBQ. My trusty Nuvi 350 took me to an empty storefront, looked to be closed at least a year. We wound up at a dinner. Oh well no BBQ that day

Double Tap

I found one reason why businesses may not exist at the map location. It is because they are not physical businesses. For example, a neighbor runs a candy delivery service from her home. She is listed on the GPS by her home address, but she cannot see customers there. The GPS makes it sound as if a candy store should be there.

We have another neighbor who is establishing a church. He too has the church listed as his home address, but don't go there on Sunday. He has been renting space until the physical church is built.

This also brings up the question of how businesses get listed. Our neighborhood has a pizza place that has been in business for over 15 years. It has never been listed. The minister told me he paid no one for a listing. So how did he get in, but a long-established pizza place be omitted?

I presume that they (Naveteq) buy databases/listings from several sources, including yellow-pages, chambers of commerce, as well as data-mine publicly available databases of governmental entities that register businesses, and the stuff that gets reported to them by users through their web site.

To submit things you find that should be there that are not, and vice versa as well report them via Naveteq's - map reporter.

There's an old saying amongst programmers; "Garbage In equals Garbage Out."

Any programmed machine can't and won't make any judgement about the "sensibility" of it's instructions. If you ask for "No Tolls" you're going to get "No Tolls." If you ask for "Fastest," you're going to get what the GPS calculates as the fastest route, even if it doesn't make any sense to you. (I run into this around my hometown all the time.)

I've had the same kinds of "problems," but I have to look into the mirror to find the real problem.

What did we do before we had our favorite make/model of GPS? I didn't have nearly the informational data-base to be mad at, nor the "headache" of anyone insistently "re-calculating" my mistakes... I love this thing! Like others, I look in the mirror and giggle, because it's all good. Years ago, it was all about getting from point A to point B. I never imagined all the fun I'd have in-between!

My most recent experience with the routing engine of my Nuvi 660 was in the Sonoma and Napa county areas of Northern California. Also with some of Tulare County which is situated in central California. I have the unit set on, "faster time".

In the Sonoma and Napa county areas it routed me over secondary roads which were often paralleling the freeways I should have been on. I just let it do it's thing, curious to see where it would take me. It always got me to my destination, albeit a couple hours late in one case. All these roads have been in existence for over 20 years.

In Tulare County the little icon indicating where my vehicle was located was often approximately 2 miles off and paralleling the road I was actually on.

If I slowed down for any reason, it would change the scale and move the icon back on the road. As I sped up, it would once again have me paralleling the road I was actually on. One particular road where this occurred, El Monte, has been there over 60 years.

GPS is a nice tool to have. However, often times a good old fashion map should be readily available.

I dont have any Problems with my 2720 but i did get wrong directions when i had a c330 my 2720 is awsome hasnt let me down once

I have a Nuvi 660 and a Street Pilot 7200. We traveled to Niagara, ON, Toronto, ON, Sudbury, ON and back to northern Michigan last June. Both units worked great and made no mistakes during the entire trip.

I have had real problems with wrong directions with my Nuvi 200w. We travel 8600 miles this spring from the west coast to the east and back. Several times and often in critical situations the directions were either wrong or suboptimized. I always set the quickest route but was taken on some back roads.

Recently I had to catch a flight and at 4am in the morning taken to they wrong place for the park and ride.

My prior Gps did not have near the problems and both used Navteq data bases so I think it has to be something else.

I have a Nuvi 350 that took me from St. Louis to the Smokey Mountains and back without ever looking at a map. It worked great and took me on the best routes. I looked up lodging and restaurants as I was driving and got all the phone numbers to call for reservations. I even set-up alerts for rest areas about 1 mile in advance. Hit the reset and put everything back to default and let it work for you.

I first purchased a Magellan, can't remember model number. It gave me wrong directions and I made two mistakes using their directions.

I then purchased a Nuvi 250W in the spring and I love it. It is plain and simple and gets me where I want to go with no issues. The price is nice and I enjoy the wider screen.

I've had routes that I didn't necessarily agree with, because of traffic conditions, or gut feeling that "my route" was quicker, but nothing as wrong as you described.

I too have had instances where my 750 has routed me over 50-75 miles of surface streets when I could (should?) have been on a parallel interstate, even though I have my preferences set as "fastest time". It's happened to me both locally in southern Ohio and while traveling in the southeast US. It almost seems as though it assumes you can maintain the same speed on surface streets as you can on the interstate. As others have said, if you're going to be in unfamiliar territory, keep a conventional map with you and use it the GPS to compliment it.

That's one reason why I don't use the avoid tolls function. I didn't think there was a way from Detroit to Windsor without paying a toll at the Ambassador Bridge or Tunnel. I'll pay the toll and stay on track.

I have only been given the wrong directions on a minor scale such as instead of turning right, it told me to turn left then make a U-turn a half mile down the road and go back.

Ironically, when I got my Nuvi 750, I tested the routing from my house in Cleveland to Niagara Falls, ON. Instead of taking the freeway all the way through, it had me get off in suburban Buffalo and drive through the streets. I did not have any avoidances and do not have a traffic receiver so this route made no sense. I checked on this board and found that there is some routing issues if you set your destination before the GPS gets its current location fix. Since then, no issues.

Not to be rude Hobby, but are you kidding me?

Different manufacturers of GPS use different routing algorithms and none of them are perfect.

To get to Walmart, my Garmin has me taking a left where left turns aren't allowed (you have to turn right and then make a u-turn a short ways down), then has me go past Walmart, take a curvy road that runs in a semicircle back to the highway and then back to Walmart in the opposite direction.

The directions are still generally much better than the Telenav on my cellphone that I used before. The Telenav would often take me on back roads that didn't go through. One time it told me that a route would get me to the highway that was a 2-track that ended a couple miles later at someone's private hunting camp. Good thing I had 4-wheel drive! Another time it had me taking a supposed road that was blocked by houses. I would have had to go through their front and back yards to even see if it was there (I declined). Another time it had me going through a back road that was blocked by huge concrete berms.

Map data is often old, the routing is often imperfect, it depends on how you have your avoidances set, etc.

GPS is no excuse not to look at road warning signs, and a good ole fashioned paper map is a good thing to carry too.

Enjoy your GPS and it is actually fun sometimes to see how it routes you. Sometimes you can even find faster routes than the ones you are used to taking.

Anyone else have some funny/horror stories about GPS routing?

I had the unhappy experience of having the in gps built into the dash telling me to turn right while the Garmin on the dash wanting to keep straight and the wife insisting that I turn left. Only the singles on line need to ask. One is far too expensive to replace.

Overall, my GPS is pretty good at getting me from point A to B efficiently, but yep, I've had my C340 send me on some unusual routes in areas I'm pretty familiar with.

There's one intersection right off of I-4 in Heathrow Fla that I go through frequently. It's rather humorous, because when I get off the exit and come to the first intersection, it wants me to turn right, go down about a quarter-mile, do a U-turn and then come back and turn right back on to the same road - all this instead of just crossing the intersection!

That being said...it also found a much faster route to work for my wife, even though she has been taking the old route for years. It saves her about 20-30 minutes each way, and with less traffic.

Guys, my C340 calculates some strange routes also, but what drives me nuts is when it calculates different routes at different times. I just don't trust it. I have it set for Fastest Time, and the only avoidance I have is for Car Pool Lanes. I can give specific examples, but the short story is like this one: I tell it where to go and it calculates a route (like from Poughkeepsie, NY to Webster, NY). I start taking that route, but I want to stay on the Thruway instead of taking the route calculated by the GPS. So, I ignore a prompt to turn off the Thruway (somewhere well south of Albany). It recalculates trying to get me to go back, which I also ignore. It then recalculates again sending me the way I want I'm going and the estimated arrival time is now 20 minutes earlier than the original route EAT. What's up with that?? Why didn't it calculate that route in the first place? This has happened more than once, and I am losing confidence in it. How about this: I'm following its suggested route, and while driving straight it starts recalculating for no reason, trying to get me to turn onto a side street. I ignore that, and it recalculates and all of a sudden I'm OK again - I'm where it wants me (but I didn't change anything). That makes no sense. Sure, it will get me there eventually, but I never know if the suggested route is close to the best one.

Just checked my avoidances to make sure and I have Toll Roads unchecked. The only ones that I do have checked are Unpaved Roads and Ferries. I guess Traffic would matter too, but I don't have that service.

My nuvi 200 seems to prefer surface roads over interstates. It is like it feels I should travel the same average speed on both. I with Garmin would add the "make more use of freeway" option to the routing like Magellan does. Yes, I have checked and Avoid highways is not clicked. I traveled from Jacksonville, Fl to Savannah, GA and it first wanted to route me on the backroads even though an Interstate is available.

Also, when you are on a longer trip, say over 50 miles, you can plot a route and after you have been ont he route a while, have garimin recalculate a new route and sometimes it comes up with a different one. When you are in a different start point it will sometimes come to a different route even though you are on the original route.

There are a couple of main roads in town where it tells me to turn right, and then basically make an immediate U-turn back on to the road I just came off of.

It also sometimes takes me off a state highway, which is fast and without stop lights, has me detour on to side roads with stop signs and lights, and then puts me back on the state highway after awhile. I know the spots it likes to do this in my corner of this state, so I just ignore it.

It also has a penchant for finding dirt roads being suitable for an ATV or a mule perhaps, and sometimes non-existent dirt roads, even though that's an 'avoidance' on my unit.

It's only failed me once completely, where it insisted I turn on to a road that was chained off. I couldn't get it to give me a 'detour' or find any other access to the road I needed, and so I drove home. (Turns out the party I was going tp had been cancelled anyway.)

The other stuff, of different routes going to and from, is odd, but I can live with it.

GC

Sounds like you are set for "shortest" vs "fastest" routing. Both my Nuvi 350 and 760 have a distinct preference for interstates and expressways versus secondary roads. And for secondary roads vs side streets, even when it is both significantly faster and shorter to take a smaller road or street.

One of the things I discovered while on a 1400 mile scenic driving tour was that a lot of the routing decision is based on the reported "type" of road that's in the map data supplied by NavTeq. We were in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and some of the County Roads were actually dirt & sand roads. They had county route signs, so how would you know from looking at a map?

I also had a similar problem at one intersection in town. It would have me turn right, do a U-turn and turn right again. That intersection used to be a "T" (dead end going east) and when the road was extended east the map people did not do a seamless "join" of the new and original roads. The map showed a miniscule break at the intersection so with the 2008 map it would route me around the gap. Zooming way in on the map view looked like there was a small jog there instead of a straight line. I reported it to NavTeq and it was fixed with the 2009 maps. I suspect that some of the reports we get of this sort of thing are caused by tiny gaps or adjoining segments of the maps not lining up just perfectly.

I was on the George Washington Bridge and my GPS said to make a U-turn.

I think not.

I have been told to turn right when the address was on the left sied of the road.

It do get a bit cornfoosed

Good thing it doesn't happen alot and I do know the city really well.
I should start writing do these blunders and sent to garman I guess.

NOW you tell me!! (LOL) I got TOTALLY LOST up at Clear Lake California trying to get to Napa California from there about 3 months ago. My poor Garmin was SCREAMING "MAKE A U-TURN" while it had me on some backwoods road with SHEAR CLIFF on one side and MOUNTAIN TOP on the other. I looked for a place to pull over but in a full size truck this is a difficult task. The next thing I knew the Garmin Nuvi started showing me streets that didn't exist and then it followed that by quickly locking up tighter than SNOT!

My wife and I just looked at it with shock, it had directed me into the middle of NOWHERE and then committed SUICIDE! I finally found a dirt road that I could turn around on and after doing so, I removed the Nuvi from his cradle and performed CPR on it (I hit the reset button on the back of it)which brought him back to life. Ever since that fateful day I now PREVIEW THE ROUTE BEFORE I TAKE IT using the SIMULATION OPTION! I maybe dumb at time but STUPID I'M NOT! (LOL)

Well, guys, after reading this thread, and especially the comment that "It was designed by a human and programmed by a human.", I realize I'm not alone, and guess I was expecting too much from that little box. I will admit that many times I have thought to myself "How the hell do they do this"? From now on I will always have a paper map and use both the map and GPS to get where I want to be as quickly and easily as possible. Never again will I berrate the box for being stupid or get myself in a dither because I don't like the routes it calculates. As I said, I seems to always get me there eventually, and that's what really counts. Thanks for all of your comments and stories. That last story was a real hoot.