GPS Nuvi help please.

[luke scott]

I have a nuvi 660. But today I left Reading to go to Holyhead and never saw a motorway . It seemed that I was"in" every feckin town in the UK to get to holyhead. I was in Oxford, Stratford upon Avon etc etc . It brought me through every town. Never a motorway.

In the "Avoidances menu" I have it set for ......
Route preference.... faster time. Is this right ?
car / motorcycle
Avoidances.... Traffic, U Turns, Highways, Unpaved roads, Toll roads, Ferries,Carpool lanes.
I need to know does ticking these turn them on or off ?

Help.

 

[Spikehammer]

You avoided Highways...i.e Motorways...ticking them turns them off.

 

[luke scott]

You avoided Highways...i.e Motorways...ticking them turns them off.

Ahh Boll*x . I thought ticking them turned them on. So leaving them unticked will take me on motorways then ?

 

[Spikehammer]

Yep...

 

[luke scott]

You avoided Highways...i.e Motorways...ticking them turns them off.

So only unpaved roads should be ticked for normal UK driving then ? (When I'm trying to get from point A with my new car / bike to Holyhead in a hurry.)

 

[Spikehammer]

If you leave Traffic ticked it will always try and go around town centres or known traffic congestion...this may not be the quickest route every time.

 

[andyclift]

Having frigged about with every tweak on my Garmin I have come to the conclusion that there is a reason for "default" settings - and that is that they work best. I am sure that many people that maintain that their satnavs come up with stupid routes is because they have played with the settings.

For example, setting avoid unpaved roads stops my Garmin using the road I live in although everything up to HGVs use it. Setting avoid U turns seems to make sense but that can bugger up routes as well and I wonder if this really means avoid very sharp turns, e.g. those that HGVs have trouble with.

This stuff is made in the States and I think there are examples where "American" has different definitions to "proper English"

 

[luke scott]

Last question.........

So on the setting of "Route preference" do you guys use "faster time" or shorter distance" ?

 

[andyclift]

So on the setting of "Route preference" do you guys use "faster time" or shorter distance" ?

Depends what I want to do. If I just want to get from A to B I normally use faster time but on holiday part of the fun is finding the back roads so I use shorter distance.

For example, in the Black Forest setting faster time for a trip resulted in, mainly autobahns but setting a destination on the opposite side of some hills and setting shorter distance found some fantastic roads with lovely bends and hairy climbs. Most not even shown on my map.

One thing to remember is the software is "absolute". If the gps reckons one route is one second faster than another which is half the distance it will choose the former although it means much more fuel and no real time difference. It's not a bad idea for longer routes to compare the distances beween faster and quicker, sometime you can get a suprise.

A good example of this is setting from my home to my daughter. If I set my home about 10 metres south of my driveway the route is sensible but if I set it 10 metres north it comes up with a totally different route using a motorway which is 9 miles further - but the times for the two routes are only 3 seconds different. Changing the second route to shorter only adds a few seconds to the time but saves me 9 miles.

 

[luke scott]

Andy, thanks for your comments. They have sorted all my questions. I have had the unit for about 9 months but used it in Europe mostly (where I knew no better route ). But I knew that I was missing the motorway in the UK yesterday when I was in traffic doing 30 mph behind some old codger and looked down from a bridge to see the "M something" with everyone doing 80 mph on it.