TT ignoring "POI along route"?

[TT193]

I used my TT's "POI along route" feature today, without much success. I wanted to find a pharmacy on the way home, so after inputting that I wanted to drive home, I used the POI along route button, and selected the Pharmacy category to bring up a list.

Many pharmacies were listed, so I selected one of the closest options, which also had a straight blue arrow icon next to it. I assumed with the pharmacy being listed as close (~.5 miles), and also with a blue arrow, meant the pharmacy would be almost exactly on my way. However, it turned out to be about 2 miles away, and also in the completely wrong direction.

I then selected a second pharmacy, which was listed as being about 2 miles away, and had a yellow icon with a squiggly arrow. This time, the pharmacy couldn't have been more perfectly situated along my route.

It seems that my TT, at least in this instance, just completely disregarded the fact that I wanted a POI along my route, not just any POI. Or perhaps I'm just not reading the POI list that TT generates correctly? Have others experienced this problem? Not to mention the fact that TT told me the first pharmacy was only .5 miles away, and it ended up being about 2 miles?

 

[dhn]

Which is a reflection of the inaccuracies of the poi data that comes with the maps.

 

[Andy_P]

Most of this can be put down to the inaccurate POI locations, but surely not the bit about having a blue "on route" arrow next to one of them, when it wasn't anywhere near the route.

Any chance you can give exact details of the route and the POI so someone else can try to emulate it or report it to TT?

 

[TT193]

Thank you for the responses. I tried to replicate my results from yesterday while using my TT from the same parking space as before, and for whatever reason, I wasn’t able to.

Nevertheless, I have a theory as to what might have happened. I believe that when TT suggests a “POI along route”, the mileage it lists and the type of arrow it presents (blue straight, yellow squiggly, etc.) are only relative to a single route to your destination that TT already planned on you taking, as though you weren’t making any stops along the way.

What I believe happened yesterday is that TT is not flexible in its routing (as far as “POI along route” is concerned), and does not consider nearly parallel routes which are almost as efficient as the original route, especially when I need to make a stop along the route.

Because of this, even if a POI is perfectly situated along a route parallel to the one TT originally selected, TT deems this to be a “detour”, because it’s not on the original route TT planned. That said, even an out of the way “POI along route” could be deemed as a better option by TT simply because it’s closer to the original route TT planned (i.e. less of a detour), even though in reality, I’d much rather take a parallel route that has a POI perfectly situated along it than go in the completely wrong direction from my ultimate destination.

Can anyone confirm if this is the way that TT operates with regard to “POI along route”, or has anyone had a similar experience?

 

[Andy_P]

I believe that when TT suggests a ?POI along route?, the mileage it lists and the type of arrow it presents (blue straight, yellow squiggly, etc.) are only relative to a single route to your destination that TT already planned on you taking, as though you weren?t making any stops along the way.

That is correct

What I believe happened yesterday is that TT is not flexible in its routing (as far as ?POI along route? is concerned), and does not consider nearly parallel routes which are almost as efficient as the original route, especially when I need to make a stop along the route.

The TT only has a very tiny brain... it cannot second-guess that you are going to ignore it and go by a different route.

Because of this, even if a POI is perfectly situated along a route parallel to the one TT originally selected, TT deems this to be a ?detour?, because it?s not on the original route TT planned.

Yes, that seems entirely reasonable to me.

That said, even an out of the way ?POI along route? could be deemed as a better option by TT simply because it?s closer to the original route TT planned (i.e. less of a detour), even though in reality, I?d much rather take a parallel route that has a POI perfectly situated along it than go in the completely wrong direction from my ultimate destination.

Again, any sat nav can only calculate a routeusing a very simple set of rules, far less intricate than the intelligent decision-making processes we can use

But as you can't recreate the problem I'm not sure where we can go next.
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