tomtom made me go by long route

[Annie82]

Hi

I have a tomtom start 60, bought less than a year ago. So far, I've used it on short local journeys where I know the route.

Yesterday I used it for a longer journey, and I suspect the machine may be barking mad!

Route was St Albans to Hereford. It took me to the m25- so far so good. Then instead of telling me to take the m40 to Oxford, it wanted me to go on the m4. Complete madness, so I ignored it and went onto the m40.

Along the way, it kept telling me it had a route 2 mins faster, and I should take the next exit. I pressed the 'no' option each time it said this.

I got to Oxford, and hit some roadworks on the bypass, heading for the a40, but no real hold up. I got to the a40, and by this point I did not know the area so was completely reliant on the bloody machine. As you can probably tell, my experience was not good.

Then it made me turn off at a junction with loads of roadworks, so I could not tell what was happening until it was too late. It told me to follow signs to Newbury, and before I knew it I was on the way to the m4. I travelled along the m4, then all the way back north again to cirencester. It put over 40 miles onto the journey!

I updated the map the day before I left home.

How can I fix this, or at least make sure I get home by a reasonable route?

 

[Arno]

If your route planing is set to fastest maybe, at that time of day, the M4 via Swindon was a little faster.

Notice that at this time (14:20h UK) even the route via the M1 > M6 > M42 > M5 > A4103 is faster.

 

[Annie82]

Hi Arno

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

As someone who is fairly new to using tom-tom, I'm not sure how I would change this. What I would like to do as the standard default is to go by the shortest route (including motorways where they are available, rather than going down B roads).

Is there a way to set this?

Also, I'm not really sure why the M4 would be quickest, as it was a Bank Holiday, not much traffic, and it ended up taking me four and a half hours to do a journey that bing and google maps both tole me should take about 3 hours. I don't see how going 40 miles out of my way made it quicker!

I have had a look at the route home, and fortunately it seems to want to take me via the A40 then M40 (which as far as I'm concerned is the correct route). However, I am worried that it will change its mind en-route, and make me go back to the M4! How can I stop it from doing this?

Anne

 

[dhn]

Planning preferences-->always select Shortest route.

 

[canderson]

I'll address a different part of your questions.

There are several methods of modifying routing available based upon information available to various models of TomTom, and your device has only some of these methods available.

First, in the case of many roads, your device will have embedded in the map data the average speeds reported by many TomTom users' devices. These average speeds are captured for surprisingly small segments of road, and if what we think to be the case is true, those averages are created for day of week, in 15 minute intervals. This is called IQRoutes. All of which is to day, your device knows the average speed for each piece of road of many roads sliced and diced in 15 minute intervals. HOWEVER... it doesn't know if a particular Monday is a bank holiday. It knows only about average speeds on Mondays at 08:00. For that reason, there will be discrepancies. This is true for all TomTom models.

Second, some units incorporate either RDS or "Live" traffic information directly into the routing.

RDS comes from local FM broadcasters. A special power cable is attached to the unit that includes the RDS receiver to pick up those broadcasts.
Live is updated more frequently, covers many more roads, and does so with higher resolution, and comes directly from TomTom's servers either because the unit has its own GSM cell modem or because it's using your cell phone to get that information.
It is by these two means that a TomTom becomes aware of road works, accidents, or other situations that create average speeds less than those embedded as IQRoutes data in the map.

So unless one purchases a TomTom unit that augments the embedded average speed data with external traffic information, there's no way for the unit to know that on a given day and time, there's a problem that might cause another route to be preferred.

 

[Arno]

Planning preferences-->always select Shortest route.

I would NOT recommend that as it would have taken her over a lot of B roads.
Worse, it will never select a ring road but will go through the city centre.

Ampthill to Orpington (per GO Live 1535)
Fastest: 1:36 hrs 130 km
Shortest 3:17 hrs 95 km

@anne,
Start by downloading the manual at
http://download.tomtom.com/open/manuals/non-LIVE/refman/TomTom-EU-non-LIVE-RG-en-gb.pdf

This is a PDF. After opening click the top left icon which will show thumb nails of all pages in the left margin.
Don't read it page for page.
After reading over the Index only look for what is important to you at the moment.

 

[dhn]

Not suggesting it either, just showing how to achieve the setting.

 

[Arno]

David, I think you misread Anne's initial post.

go by the shortest route (including motorways where they are available, rather than going down B roads

I'm not really sure why the M4 would be quickest, [ ... ] and it ended up taking me four and a half hours to do a journey that bing and google maps both tole me should take about 3 hours.

"Shortest" in this case meant time wise, not distance.
Operative: 'motorways rather than B roads'.

 

[Annie82]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

I have had a fiddle with it and found eco routes. Do you think this would solve the problem? Presumably this would take me via the nearest motorway ( or am I being too optimistic?)

 

[dhn]

In theory, eco routes supposedly provides a combo of highways and main roads to diminish the number of red lights encountered on a journey. Nobody I've seen who tried using that method seemed overly pleased with the results but you can certainly try it.