Who wrote your segment detection code?

Explain to me how this activity:

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/5237518867 

Matches either of these segments:

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/segment/3AAA76261216409CB51889D49D6ED7CC

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/segment/D541913BDBE94CAC98AA1BD8E5419F7F

Good questions, but wrong place. This is primarily user forum for mutual help, and we can't help you with it. You better contact the Support, but I'd advise calming down a bit first, and being polite instead of directly offensive in this way - that won't bring you far.

BTW, I reported the same issue (and 4 other ones with Segments) to the Support some days ago, and they were quite cooperative. However, it does not mean it will get high on their priority list, and be fixed quickly. So the more people report the issue and send them data, the better, and the higher chance it gets fixed.

Think of it like this. If you are riding a long segment and take a wrong turn for a few hundred meters and then return back to the segment where you took the wrong turn. Wouldn't you think that you still are riding the segment or do you think that you should start from the beginning of the segment? Or if the GPS lost position and logged you a few kilometers away from the segment for a few seconds.

This time you took a "wrong turn" for just a bit longer.

How does Strava do it? I've considered Strava to be a bit more kind than Garmin in segment detection, but I haven't tested anything like this.

e7andy said:

If you are riding a long segment and take a wrong turn

I think you misunderstood the problem. There is indeed a bug in the Segments assignment. Better told there are several different bugs (I reported 5 of them to the Support). In this specific case, an Activity is assigned to the Segment even if you left the Segment and never came back to it. See the example below - the Activity (red line) leaves the segment (purple line) in the second half, and then continues on a completely different road. Still the Activity was assigned to the Segment, and the time spent on the Segment was taken as the final time (depite that the distance was much shorter), In the consequence, the owner of the Activity is the leader of the segment, despite that he never completed it.

e7andy said:

This time you took a "wrong turn" for just a bit longer.

Yeah, a 10 mile detour. That's the point. If you take a 10 mile detour from a segment, then you didn't ride the segment and it shouldn't track the segment. It also shouldn't remove the detour time from your segment time. That's just crazy.

Strava absolutely does not count something like this completing the segment.

Yes. That is definitely wrong. You should be required to cross the start and end point and go the full segment between those two points. But in between I don't consider it wrong to take a detour as long as you come back to the segment as described in this thread.

I think that the total time from the start point to the end point should be counted as segment time which doesn't seem to be the case. Garmin only counts the time actually on the segment.

You did ride the segment. You can't deny that. How long detour should be allowed according to you? 

I completely agree with you that the full time from start to end of the segment should be used. Not just the time on the segment.

e7andy said:

You did ride the segment. You can't deny that. How long detour should be allowed according to you? 

No you didn't. Riding a segment is a continuous act. You can't do it in parts. Yes, you physically road over the same locations, but you didn't do it as a segment.

I understand you have to have some leeway, but 10 miles is unacceptable. Really, anything more than 20-30 meters off course should invalidate a segment match.

Ok. I haven't read the definition of segments. Where can I read about how segments should work? You can have your own ideas how it should work but that doesn't mean it is correct.

I see segment as a race. You are usually allowed to deviate from a race course as long as you come back to the point where you went off course.

The only issue I see here is that the time is stopped when you go off course. 

Often you aren't allowed to deviate from a race course, regardless if you come back to the same point or not.

I think it's silly, but at least not stopping the time would be better than the current situation. The downside is that you're going to clutter the bottom of the segment leader board with all kinds of stuff that wasn't really someone riding the segment. I'd rather not have a ride show that I did a segment, when I really just crossed the same ground at some point, even if it says that my .5 km segment took me an hour.