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

facade

forgotmyname said:

 <snip>
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.
<snip>

The inbuilt satnavs on both our cars are manufacturer branded Bosch LCNs (Low cost Navigation or something).

They both lose sight of the satellites for long periods.

Sometimes on cloudy days, sometimes on sunny days. (Yesterday I drove with no satellites in view at all, ther was a geomagnetic storm a couple of days ago...)

When this happens they use dead reckoning based on heading and how far the wheels have gone to map to the nearest road.

sometimes they map to an adjacent road and get all confusicated, and eventually there is a big enough cumulative error to notice- like it is a couple of miles from where we are.

Calling up the position information says how many satellites are in use, if it is less than 4 it can't work out where it is.

Eventually they pick up enough satellites for  a position lock and it jumps to the correct place.

ChequeBookGerry

You mean "sensible" mode.  Sadly not has not been invested yet.  Wish is had.  I love my Garmin and have had a few over the years (way better than Tomtom) but it does send me down country lanes.  You'll really just got to look at the map on a larger scale and choose to ignore turns.

EnPointe

royP_2 said:

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.

change it to 'fastest' rather than 'shortest' route 

Grumpy_chap

Some sat nav devices also have an "HGV" route option, which one assumes would avoid the narrowest of lanes.

I sometimes find, in countryside areas, the "fastest" route can calculate incorrectly if there is a single-track route but with 60 mph limit, it assumes you will be doing 60 mph down that lane even though you can only crawl along.

born_again

EnPointe said:

change it to 'fastest' rather than 'shortest' route 

Given many country lanes are National Speed Limit (60 in a car) they are often faster than main roads which may have 30,40,50 MPH limits.

In reality to miss country lanes you need to look at maps (google will do) or follow road signs that keep you on main roads.

ontheroad1970

Bigwheels1111 said:

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.

A lot of the time, the M6 toll road is little or no faster than the normal M6.  

ontheroad1970

I try and have a road atlas in the car, and if I am doing a long journey I don't make often, will look at the route on the map in the atlas first.  It can come in handy when you encounter a real issue and need a detour when your satnav continually tries to send you back to the same route with the traffic problem.

Bigwheels1111

ontheroad1970 said:

Bigwheels1111 said:

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.

A lot of the time, the M6 toll road is little or no faster than the normal M6.  

Could be, but as my vehicle is registered as disabled we pay £7 a year to use the toll road.
So it’s a no brainier for us. 

Nasqueron

ontheroad1970 said:

I try and have a road atlas in the car, and if I am doing a long journey I don't make often, will look at the route on the map in the atlas first.  It can come in handy when you encounter a real issue and need a detour when your satnav continually tries to send you back to the same route with the traffic problem.

It's a lot easier and quicker just to whack it on google maps as it'll be very similar to what the SatNav uses, especially on the fastest route option and you can see where it'll use small roads. My car satnav actually has 4 options, fastest, shortest, most economical and another one I can't remember, it shows the distance and time of each alternative. I typically now use google maps on the phone as the satnav maps are out of date and I won't pay for updates plus it has travel, warnings of speed cameras/vans etc (not really an issue as I normally drive at around 62 on the motorway but does give warning for people braking at the last second!)

ontheroad1970

Nasqueron said:

ontheroad1970 said:

I try and have a road atlas in the car, and if I am doing a long journey I don't make often, will look at the route on the map in the atlas first.  It can come in handy when you encounter a real issue and need a detour when your satnav continually tries to send you back to the same route with the traffic problem.

It's a lot easier and quicker just to whack it on google maps as it'll be very similar to what the SatNav uses, especially on the fastest route option and you can see where it'll use small roads. My car satnav actually has 4 options, fastest, shortest, most economical and another one I can't remember, it shows the distance and time of each alternative. I typically now use google maps on the phone as the satnav maps are out of date and I won't pay for updates plus it has travel, warnings of speed cameras/vans etc (not really an issue as I normally drive at around 62 on the motorway but does give warning for people braking at the last second!)

Better to have a hard copy in the car in case you can't get coverage, also good idea to look at the possible routes so you can get ahead of the satnav when she decides to send you back the way you came, or where there is more traffic.  I make sure to know parallel routes to places not so far away from my true destination in case it is better to take a route to somewhere within 20 miles.  My wife missed a flight in a situation where there was gridlock, and better knowledge of other routes would have enabled her to make the flight albeit losing 30 or so minutes by going south and then east.  Also, just about everyone is following the same reroutes.  A little lateral thinking and a knowledge of other routes 20 miles south can sometimes be a lifesaver.