Garmin Drive Smart takes me down narrow lanes, how to avoid?

royP_2

My Garmin Drive Smart satnav keeps taking me down narrow country lanes when I would rather go a longer way around on better roads.
Is there any way to set the satnav to do this, in easy steps please as I am no expert with these types of devices.
Thank you.

ElefantEd

You probably have options to choose "fastest" route vs "shortest" route - fastest routes tend to be longer but use better roads. Or you may be able to tell it to go via waypoints (intermediate places between start and finish) which force it to use the more major roads.

Alternatively buy a road atlas and use that to start off on the more major roads, so that the satnav recalculates and you can use it just for the last part of your journey.

chrisw

I've found most satnavs do this regardless of settings. I look at the road it wants me to turn down and if it looks a bit dodgy, ignore it and will reroute until you find a turning you're happy with.
You can't always tell, but it usually works.

oldagetraveller1

chrisw said:

I've found most satnavs do this regardless of settings. I look at the road it wants me to turn down and if it looks a bit dodgy, ignore it and will reroute until you find a turning you're happy with.
You can't always tell, but it usually works.

Agreed, TomTom too. Fastest route selected and, no I will take you down the narrowest of lanes because it cuts a corner. Encounter Farmer Giles on a tractor travelling the same way, nightmare.

Ignore the navigation and continue on the same A road and a re-route continues on that same A road to meet where said farm track exits!

DullGreyGuy

Waze has various options you can set like if you're a taxi, car or bike which it then uses to calculate routes (eg London Bridge can only be crossed by Taxis 7-7 so will factor that into the routing). Likewise you can specify for charges such as being congestion zone exempt etc. 

There must be another similar app that is aimed at HGVs to avoid the narrowest of roads or width/height restrictions.

If you dont like a turning you can just ignore it and allow the satnav to reroute you but if you're in an area that you dont know at all it can potentially take you way off route and can equally get you back to where you were and push you to take the turn again 

facade

You can set the default routing to Fastest

How depends on which garmin you have, in general it is done from settings

https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/drivesmart55-65/EN-US/GUID-B9E024D7-8317-4401-983C-9D6B6FA08AC6.html

Shortest: will take you up dirt tracks, right through a city centre etc.

Fastest: will put you on a motorway rather than an A road if the overall time at 70 is  going to be less than the time staying on the A roads. It may still go up lanes as they can be NSL so would be faster than the 40 mph dual carriageway you want to drive on.

There will also be a setting to avoid tolls, I'd enable it.

You can edit a route to avoid a particular road if you want.

born_again

Given many narrow lanes are NSL (60) & main roads will be a lower speed. You can see why fastest takes you done these roads.

Sadly this is a common issue with many sat nav's.

Better to just use as a guide & then use your own judgement if it is saying go down a narrow road, then there are clear signs on main road to your destination.

ididgetwhereiamtoday

Taxi mode will probably take you the longest route. 

Bigwheels1111

I do a route that has this problem.
I set 2 destinations in the history.
The first takes me to a motorway on the route I want.
When I get onto the motorway I then choose the second address and that avoids the back roads.
A lot easier than trying to work out the settings.
The worst journey is Blackpool to London.
I use the M6 toll road, but getting from that to the M40 is a right pain.
The sat nav forces you down the M1.
So I pick services on the route after the toll road to force it to go my way.

Johnmcl7

chrisw said:

I've found most satnavs do this regardless of settings. I look at the road it wants me to turn down and if it looks a bit dodgy, ignore it and will reroute until you find a turning you're happy with.
You can't always tell, but it usually works.

That's my experience as well and I've found Google Maps, Nokia Here maps and Tomtom all do it regardless of settings which I find puzzling as a quick glance at a map will give a good idea of which roads are better to use and now with the amount of data back from vehicles you'd think they would know which roads are slower and which are faster.  

Oddly a very old Tomtom XL with no online connectivity was much better at choosing longer, faster routes sticking to better roads for longer but over time its maps were getting too out of date.  As others have recommended I've got used to following the road signs, sticking with main roads and checking maps before hand to work out the better route but it's surprising it's needed these days.

forgotmyname

All the maps and Sat Nav's have their moments and try to deviate you for no good reason.  A49 North it would direct me off the main road and down
a track which then had a sharp right turn and back onto the road it took me off.

Another would suddenly put us in a field and keep telling us to turn around, or another one that said we left the motorway and circling the
roundabout at sub 20mph when in the outside lane doing 70mph. It would often take a mile to get its memory back and realise we
were still on the right motorway and would be for another 2 hours.

Don't like the road it suggests then don't take it. It will reroute.