Tom Tom : HD Traffic : Useless ?

HEADRAT

HEADRAT

HEADRAT

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
21,499
Location
Cambridge, UK
Hi,

OK I've had my TOMTOM for about six months and at first I was impressed with the HD Traffic but the more I've used it the more I'm not sure if it's completely and utterly useless.

The problem is it seems to like A roads due to the lack of speed sensors e.g. if a motorway is busy it will send you down a A road which will be just as choka but because there are no speeds sensors on that road it will say the roads are empty!

Many times it will ask me to reroute and I'll say "yes" only to find that if I follow my normal route the delays are just "phantom", in the time it's taken to get to the queue it's already cleared.

What are other people experiences?

Cheers

HEADRAT
 
Hi,

tl;dr: Mixed opinions - still undecided.

I have had mine for.... I'm not sure. 9 or 11 months... Less than a year, but I might have bought it around about New Year...

Anyway, I only really use the HD Traffic thing to tell me how late I'm going to be. In that respect it works really well. The delays it's calculated are pretty much spot on in my experience.

I have only used the rerouting option once. It's offered to reroute me dozens of times. I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that.

But yeah, my experience is that it's awful. It was going to be a 32 minute delay on the M62 eastbound roadworks near Bradford. I was already running late and it said it could get me to my destination 22 mins quicker. "Brilliant!", I thought, and since I knew I was more than 2 miles from the start of the 50 zone I thought it woul dbe worth it.

I'm not sure how long I would have sat in the car park I'd rolled up to but I thought I'd let it guide me another, less congested way... I *think* it took me through either Huddersfield or Halifax... at morning rush hour. I ended up being about 1 hour late for work that day, and saved, I reckon about -(negative) 40 mins.

I've never used that feature before, or since.

IF you happen to know an alternative route.... THEN I find the traffic warning useful. It'll tell you how many miles away and the duration of the expected delay, so you can use your geographic knowledge to avoid that part of your journey and rejoin the usual route later on, or just go a completely different way and let it sort out how you get there (once you get it to stop telling you to turn around when possible).

So in summary - I've found it useless and daren't let it prove me wrong. I just use it to let me know how late I will be, so I can call people and let them know. For that, it's pretty accurate.
 
I LOVE my HD Traffic on my TT950.

I find it's very accurate, often predicting a jam before I see the brake lights, or routing me onto roads that are fine.
 
I've been using it for a year or so now. As my commute to work takes me round the west side of the M25 and back every day it gets used a hell of a lot. I find that some times there are "phantom" traffic issues, but mostly it's spot on. Re-routing works fine and has saved me a fair amount of time over the past year.

To traffic data comes from the rds system, plus it compiles information on location / speed of vodafone sims.
 
Who's the Data supplied by?

The Traffic Data in Dad's 5 Series is absolutely awesome. Never had any phantom issues and it always gets the location of the back of the queue spot on.

Recently we were coming up the motorway (and still had a few more junctions to go) but then the car suddenly goes. "The traffic situation has changed, there are traffic problems on your route. Leave at the next junction", it then guided us the way on A-roads and as we passed over the motorway just after getting off you could see the back of the queue!
 
Jono said:
Hi,

tl;dr: Mixed opinions - still undecided.

I have had mine for.... I'm not sure. 9 or 11 months... Less than a year, but I might have bought it around about New Year...

Anyway, I only really use the HD Traffic thing to tell me how late I'm going to be. In that respect it works really well. The delays it's calculated are pretty much spot on in my experience.

I have only used the rerouting option once. It's offered to reroute me dozens of times. I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that.

But yeah, my experience is that it's awful. It was going to be a 32 minute delay on the M62 eastbound roadworks near Bradford. I was already running late and it said it could get me to my destination 22 mins quicker. "Brilliant!", I thought, and since I knew I was more than 2 miles from the start of the 50 zone I thought it woul dbe worth it.

I'm not sure how long I would have sat in the car park I'd rolled up to but I thought I'd let it guide me another, less congested way... I *think* it took me through either Huddersfield or Halifax... at morning rush hour. I ended up being about 1 hour late for work that day, and saved, I reckon about -(negative) 40 mins.

I've never used that feature before, or since.

IF you happen to know an alternative route.... THEN I find the traffic warning useful. It'll tell you how many miles away and the duration of the expected delay, so you can use your geographic knowledge to avoid that part of your journey and rejoin the usual route later on, or just go a completely different way and let it sort out how you get there (once you get it to stop telling you to turn around when possible).

So in summary - I've found it useless and daren't let it prove me wrong. I just use it to let me know how late I will be, so I can call people and let them know. For that, it's pretty accurate.
Click to expand...

It routing you through a city at rush hour makes it pretty poor. You blindly following it, though, shows a massive lack of common sense.
 
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