country lanes and garmin760

[carlovers]

guys i have garmin 310d very good but whats annoying is it does like taking you down tight country lanes which is very stressful even if you change your vehicle mode to truck,thought i might have a software fault but saw a reviewer with same problem. So does anyone know if the latest garmins ie 760-860 have different navigation software? had been thinking of the tom tom go 30s with there new iq average speed route planning but have seen reviews where this has made these country lanes more used than before and useres get frustrated with this. ,

[DIW35]

Nope, the 760 is just as keen on stupid narrow roads. Mine took me down one that petered out to a dirt track. Luckily I was in my old rust bucket so I kept going. It did come out on to a decent road eventually, but I wouldn't have enjoyed going down there in anything half decent.

[carlovers]

DI really appreciate you coming in, can you put the 760 into truck mode and still taken you down these lanes? you have basically convinced me to keep away ,shame as i like the garmin set up.Also thought the tom tom iq sysem would sort this problem out but appears to have worsend it.Im more and more inclined to go for the syrius proline 2000 will put a new topic up.

Edited by carlovers on Saturday 9th August 15:57

[DIW35]

Having read other forums, I think the only thing putting it in truck mode does is to adjust the ETA. Doesn't seem to make any difference as to the choice of route. I think the only one that does is pedestrian, as this will allow routes the wrong way down one way streets.

[carlovers]

DI what do you make of this. Just sat in the car experimenting with the garmin310. put in 4 different random dest. (didnt know the places), on the map were away roads .the mileages when in truck or car mode were allways different!!In one instance from my home in london to a village in bucks. was 34 miles in car mode but 50 in truck mode so it does make a difference ,but ive been down hellishly small lanes in truck mode so its got me beat.Trouble is if you ring up garmin you will never get to speak to a tech. wizard just one of the office bods who will probably just blag the answer.

Edited by carlovers on Saturday 9th August 17:35

Edited by carlovers on Saturday 9th August 17:36

[DIW35]

Perhaps it does make a difference, but I've never found it to be so whenever I have tried it on any of my journeys.

Perhaps you need to follow the routes (on the unit) to the destinations you have chosen to see where the difference comes from. Is it avoiding narrow lanes, or is there some other reason why the distance for the truck is longer?

[Seight_Returns]

Can only agree with what others have said.

Generally very happy with my 760, but the tendancy to take me down stupid little roads is infuriating.

[phylet]

IIRC truck mode just avoids weight/height/width limits marked on the maps, naturally thin roads dont get marked as commons sense *should* cover that for most drivers, but not on the satnav

[carlovers]

spoke to madt350 who told me Very decently i may add as he sells the stuff,that a syrius proline 2000 took him down a narrow lane that had a gate at the end of it so they are all as bad as each other.Realise that "commonsense" should make you think im not going down there and ive learnt and i dont but you put yourself in a position of going round in circles,please dont come in and say you should sort it out before you go,i do a shed load of miles and what would be the point of a satnav.

Edited by carlovers on Wednesday 13th August 11:11

[bigbadbikercats]

carlovers said:

please dont come in and say you should sort it out before you go,i do a shed load of miles and what would be the point of a satnav.

You should sort it out before you go.

Basically all self-contained nav units will suck to a greater or lesser extent when left to do all the routing for you (for a start they're never going to be any better than the data and Mr Garmin seems to have better things to do with his time than measure the width of every single minor road). In my experience it really is far better to use Garmin mapsource on the PC to plan your routes (much better/easier/nicer to do on a sensibly sized screen) in advance, review them using a bit of common sense (and the "show in Google Earth" button for really dubious looking bits), and then download to the device for later use. Either way best treated as a navigational aid rather than a replacement for your brain.

Personally I quite like narrow country roads, don't mind opening (and closing) the odd gate, don't necessarily freak out when the tarmac goes away and I've found some quite interesting places/roads/sights by setting my trusty old Streetpilot 2610 to "shortest distance" routing or using routes Mapsource has generated with the road preference slider cranked all the way across to "Prefer minor roads" - I can see it could be kind of annoying if you just want to get somewhere though

--
JG

[Mr POD]

THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A DECENT MAP BOOK. (Use it in conjunction with the sat nav if you must)

[casbar]

Mr POD said:

THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A DECENT MAP BOOK. (Use it in conjunction with the sat nav if you must)

There is if you need glasses to read but not to drive with. Reading a map is a nightmare, where following a sat nav makes for a stress free journey. But as already stated, when I'm towing my trailer, I don't go down dubious roads - common sense

[carlovers]

having done the "knowledge" although i dont drive a london cab,my neurons are well fired up for using maps. I just wanted to know if there was a way round this without all the prep,the night before .There isnt so for me its a map or nothing,or a satnav and take my chances.what i have found out is every road is weighted from 1-6 cant remember which is the unclassified roads ,So if someone has taken the trouble to do that surely they could stick in the routeing engine a mode to not use unclassified roads ,it cant be that hard, i personally would pay a premium to have that facility.

Edited by carlovers on Wednesday 13th August 12:43

[DIW35]

Mr POD said:

THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A DECENT MAP BOOK. (Use it in conjunction with the sat nav if you must)

There is if you don't fancy juggling umpteen books during your trip across Europe, and the only luggage space in your car is the size of a briefcase.

[bigbadbikercats]

carlovers said:

...what i have found out is every road is weighted from 1-6 cant remember which is the unclassified roads ,So if someone has taken the trouble to do that surely they could stick in the routeing engine a mode to not use unclassified roads...

That's how the "prefer minor roads" <-> "prefer highways" slider in Mapsource works. Trouble is that the routing algorithms in portable satnavs are limited by memory and processor grunt so in general you just get a simplistic choice of "shorter distance" or "faster journey" and an option to constraint the length of time it spends finding/optimising candidate routes - the other problem is the inevitable case where you end up with a 40 mile A-road detour to avoid 300 yards of unclassified roads, which is almost as annoying.

If I can't plan and review routes in advance I generally tend to rely on a combination of a map book and my own sense of direction to spot when Mr Garmin's doing something silly and only rely on the Magic Box Of Maps for "terminal guidance" to my final destination and through urban sprawl where you are at least reasonably confident of staying on tarmac

--
JG

[carlovers]

nicely put,yes the 40 mile detour for the sake of 300yds is the killer its unworkable i guess, good luck

[Mr POD]

casbar said:

Mr POD said:

THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A DECENT MAP BOOK. (Use it in conjunction with the sat nav if you must)

There is if you need glasses to read but not to drive with. Reading a map is a nightmare, where following a sat nav makes for a stress free journey. But as already stated, when I'm towing my trailer, I don't go down dubious roads - common sense

I don't have sat nav, but with a map I decide the route in advance. Can you check the route on a sat nav the night before ?

[DIW35]

Mr POD said:

casbar said:

Mr POD said:

THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A DECENT MAP BOOK. (Use it in conjunction with the sat nav if you must)

There is if you need glasses to read but not to drive with. Reading a map is a nightmare, where following a sat nav makes for a stress free journey. But as already stated, when I'm towing my trailer, I don't go down dubious roads - common sense

I don't have sat nav, but with a map I decide the route in advance. Can you check the route on a sat nav the night before ?

Yes. I am going on a trip to Italy in September. I have chosen the route I want to do, including a couple of nice Alpine passes, planned it all on Autoroute, and imported the routes to my satnav so that it is all ready to go. The advantage of the satnav is that if youshold happen to wander off your chosen route, it will happily guide you back on to it, sometimes before you have even realised you have wandered off track.

[niva441]

I'm interested that your having problems with Garmin recommending narrow lanes. I've found that my 360 is adverse to using minor roads and needs a lot of persuasion / ignoring directions to decide to use them.

[carlovers]

niva can you put it in different moes if you can try taxi see what happens