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Completely Inacurate Traffic Reporting

Former Member over 14 years ago

I have to say I am very disappointed with the lifetime traffic service that came with my Nuvi 1390T. I cannot rely on my Garmin's traffic warnings at all even though I live in the New York City / Long Island metro area.

Often the display will show a red highlight for the next mile and tries to re-route me around it -- even though I can clearly see that entire stretch of highway ahead of me contains no traffic at all. This happens far to often to be a recently cleared accident or tie-up. The opposite also happens when I find myself at a dead stand still in massive traffic, only to have my Garmin indicating no traffic problems at all. And if I decide to pass up a recommended route home, the 1390T will insist for many miles that I take the next exit and perform a u-turn to go back to the recommended route, even though that would clearly be inefficient in both time and distance. So having used this product for several months now, it is clear to me that it is totally unreliable. This is probably the first and last Garmin I will ever purchase and could never recommend the brand to anyone. I thought they were supposed to be the best.

Does anyone know if all GPS brands use the same 3rd party service for traffic reporting in a given area?

Thanks.

0 stevekn over 14 years ago

At least you appear to be receiving traffic information.

In London and the Motorways of SE England my 3790T did not receive information.

Garmin have replaced the power lead/ aerial (at my expense for postage) but did not include the extra aerial, that is needed in Europe due to weaker FM signals. I have been waiting over a month. for this replacement, on top of the delay for the power lead.

How do you access the information? When the previous device did briefly receive information I got a red icon pertaining to the last mile of my journey, around which I always take another route to my home.
I do not think it is safe to interrogate the 3790T whilst driving on the motorway. Why is traffic information not included in the voice commands.
Does the 3790T speak the problem when it first sees it? \
The traffic on my 3790T has been so dodgy that i cannot tell?

Steve

0 Former Member over 14 years ago

Traffic ahead is usually indicated with a green ,yellow or red circular traffic icon in the upper left with a time indication of how much time in minutes it will be adding onto my trip. Don't be jealous, because it is totally inaccurate. I also do not understand the point of the "detour" button that lets you re-route around such a delay because when you press it the device immediately asks (via text) if you are sure you really want to do this because it has already taken this delay into consideration and feels it is still the best route to take. Mind you, I have my 1390T set for shortest time, not shortest distance - so that makes no sense at all. Which leaves me wondering why anyone would press the detour button.

Besides speaking street names, my 1390T on rare occasion has spoken something like "Traffic ahead". (So rare, I can't recall the exact words.) The majority of those times there was no traffic at all. Only once can I recall that there was a large amount of traffic after the warning. Solely based on the odds of the device being accurate, I naturally had ignored it. Might as well not have the device at all because I am always forced to second guess it. Ninety nine percent of the time I am right and the Garmin is wrong. Really has me disappointed.

In your case, my advice would be to get the antenna and then sell the entire thing on Ebay to get some money back. Then buy a different brand because the traffic reports, even if you receive them, are inaccurate -- at least here in the NYC area.