Drivesmart 61LMT on a long drive

Have you tried using the Drive Phone app with it? As long as you have cell service you will get timely traffic and road condition reports. Despite the amount of information you get, it uses very little data.

Without it, you are only receiving Traffic where there is an FM station broadcasting it. Those things you are reporting are all typical of the FM Traffic reporting.

Yes, I always use Garmin Smart Link app for traffic. Drive smart LMT uses Garmin Smart Link only for traffic and other data. It works fine in City but outside far away there was no traffic update available that is why it did not give us any information about traffic jam which was miles long.

AM stations can be heard hundreds of miles away whereas FM has a much shorter range. So your chance of getting FM north of Orillia are probably zilch !

Yesterday using my new 65DS my route had me pull off at an intersection, drive 450 meters, do a "U" turn and come back to the same road. I have (with another unit) also been advised to pull off at a ramp and then go right back on to the main road. Both are routes I travel all the time and seem to be one time events.
Got to use a Garmin with some common sense

I used to see that a lot with Delorme Street Atlas. And at full zoom the culprit would be a cartographer has failed to complete a drawn line. I saw that some on the earlier Garmin's, and never could pin it on a broken line.

Only thing I cn suggest is to make sure of your routing mode, toll use selection, and look very closely at the Avoids, both manual and selected roads. Sometimes a glitch will create an avoid.

However, zoom in all the way and inspect the roads in the area of the reroute and make sure there are no incomplete lines. One other possible thing may be that there is a road or traffic issue that hasn't cleared out. Although, my experience with Drive is that if there has been a temporary issue, Drive would have been telling you about it for as much last 50 miles ahead of time.

I haven't experienced bozo routing for a while. Several map updates. Is your map up-to-date?

I was going to ask the same. Also, don't follow the navigation blindly. Look at the route. If it looks to be continuing on the same road, don't get off.

Thanks for your feedback and advice. Maps on my Garmin device are up to date. All the avoidance settings are correct. It asked me only once to change route due to highway 69 North bound closure when there was no closure. While coming back south bound on Highway 69 from Sudbury it warned me about he highway closure when there no closure.

I don't think my device settings are not correct but it is a map update issue. They probably got the highway closure info years ago but they never updated it.

Digital traffic was also lacking outside city. This is the first time I have seen bad traffic info. It has always been good for years on our long trips.

I kept Waze navigation running on parallel to be on safe side. I know Waze is very up to date with traffic and road closures etc.

Check your driving profile set in the unit as well. Setting speeds too high on secondary roads will cause your route to leave the Interstate and go to a secondary road then back to the interstate as an example.

The issue was that Garmin was asking me to change route due to highway closure which was not there anymore. I was getting messages like "Highway 69 is closed ahead, please exit on this road.." There is nothing wrong with my settings. My point was that Garmin did not update their info for the highway closures which might have happened long time ago but now highway is not closed anywhere.

My Garmin GPS was not asking to change route for any others but due to highway closure as per its database.

That information is not Garmin information, and is not included in the Map data, other than the permanent removal of the road. That information you were getting was either from the built in traffic, which is provided by an FM Broadcast station, Traffic Data from Smartlink,(DS61/51 and lower), or the Drive app, DS55/65). Smartlink and Drive data comes from HERE, the mapping company. So it ha nothing to do with the Garmin map data or software.

Your difficulty is from outdated/expired data from the Traffic Provider.

Don't Garmin Smartphone Link and Drive App use dynamic crowd sourced data in a way similar to the way Waze and Google Traffic do? At least as part of the traffic data reporting? I always assumed they did, but I suppose some of the data also comes from other sources and is pushed out by the traffic provider and therefore could be outdated and override the crowd sourced information.

I can't say, Alan. Here certainly uses data from the HERE app running in the background on cell phones. The Data that the Smartlink and Drive is certainly timely enough.

On my bus route there is a major construction project on a 4 lane to straighten the S curves in the East bound lanes. couple million cubic yards of dirt, yada yada. The traffic info changes hourly, during the day. However I do know they are at a minimum, fed data from VA511 system and National 511 system, as well as information from the VDOT on overall ongoing construction.

Smart and Drive seem to pick up quite quickly the moving road block/construction sites. I would guess the HERE must use very similar methods to Google and Waze. They certainly wouldn't be able to compete with them if they didn't.