Home › Microsoft Streets and Trips › Wonderful Streets & Trips horror story...
So last week my wife and I headed for Vermont & New Hampshire. New laptop, Microsoft Streets and Trips 2009, new power inverter, new FM transmitter for the turn by turn over the stereo... ready to rock.
Left PA... went through Jersey and New York... Got to Vermont in 5 hours and a few mins. No problems. A few days later we headed to New Hampshire. No problem.
So now it was time to head home. So I mapped the quickest route from North Conway NH to our home in Palmyra PA. It was a lengthy trip but a lot of highway driving and very little need for constant attention on the GPS. Easy stuff.
So we make it out of New Hampshire and into Massachusetts no problem. Then on through Connecticut, also with no snags. Headed down through New York towards Jersey... this is where the fun started...
Turn by turn was guiding us flawlessly through exits and ramps... about a quarter mile ahead of time it told us exactly what to do. UNTIL... Route 95 split. It was a 4 lane split into 2 lanes per side. I continued on in our lane... only to realize that the GPS made absolutely no recommendation as to the direction we should go. Finally about a quarter mile down the road it piped up. "OFF ROUTE!"
"no sh*t"
So it recalculated. Back on route and headed back to our road. Nope. Recalculating. This thing took us into the ugliest part of town somewhere near Lodi NJ. And then it took us on a 13 mile run through it all. Then it took us towards a highway and told us the wrong direction on a ramp. So we followed it. Recalculating route... again. We counted 10 times (yeah thats TEN) that it hiccuped and recalculated.
It was going
"recalculat... off route"
"Proceed to the nea... off route"
"Off rou... recal... off... Procee...off route"
Imagine this all happening in a bad neighborhood at 1:30am after 9 hours of driving.
We lost an entire hour in Jersey. There is construction going on down there. So I made sure I did the construction updates. Everything seemed well.
Hope no one else goes through this!
Left PA... went through Jersey and New York... Got to Vermont in 5 hours and a few mins. No problems. A few days later we headed to New Hampshire. No problem.
So now it was time to head home. So I mapped the quickest route from North Conway NH to our home in Palmyra PA. It was a lengthy trip but a lot of highway driving and very little need for constant attention on the GPS. Easy stuff.
So we make it out of New Hampshire and into Massachusetts no problem. Then on through Connecticut, also with no snags. Headed down through New York towards Jersey... this is where the fun started...
Turn by turn was guiding us flawlessly through exits and ramps... about a quarter mile ahead of time it told us exactly what to do. UNTIL... Route 95 split. It was a 4 lane split into 2 lanes per side. I continued on in our lane... only to realize that the GPS made absolutely no recommendation as to the direction we should go. Finally about a quarter mile down the road it piped up. "OFF ROUTE!"
"no sh*t"
So it recalculated. Back on route and headed back to our road. Nope. Recalculating. This thing took us into the ugliest part of town somewhere near Lodi NJ. And then it took us on a 13 mile run through it all. Then it took us towards a highway and told us the wrong direction on a ramp. So we followed it. Recalculating route... again. We counted 10 times (yeah thats TEN) that it hiccuped and recalculated.
It was going
"recalculat... off route"
"Proceed to the nea... off route"
"Off rou... recal... off... Procee...off route"
Imagine this all happening in a bad neighborhood at 1:30am after 9 hours of driving.
We lost an entire hour in Jersey. There is construction going on down there. So I made sure I did the construction updates. Everything seemed well.
Hope no one else goes through this!
PiNHeaD, thanks for the story . Sure I'm glad you eventually made it home, safe, and unharmed.
Unfortunately, if an area is under construction, there is very little a mapping program can do to avoid this type of silliness. The "Construction Update" feature built into Streets & Trips is nice to have, but it is far from perfect, as described by Larry of Microsoft in the following thread: Streets & Trips Construction Update Quality
Unfortunately, if an area is under construction, there is very little a mapping program can do to avoid this type of silliness. The "Construction Update" feature built into Streets & Trips is nice to have, but it is far from perfect, as described by Larry of Microsoft in the following thread: Streets & Trips Construction Update Quality
This is one of the reason i don't like the auto route recalculation feature. I prefer to turn the option OFF, then when i go off route, figure out myself if i can come back on route before pressing the F3 key. Sometimes route recalculation can guide you in a no sense turn that could make the travelling a couple km longer (because it is trying to use a major street), when it is more simple to turn back and reaching original route.
Another drawback of route recalculation is that if your car is not stopped, sometimes while recalculating, you may have already miss the next turn of the new calculated route to go back on route, getting in a sequence of many route recalculations that can distract you from keeping your eyes on the route which is much more important. I prefer to verify the route manually before riding additional km by being stopped somewhere and checking at it...
Another drawback of route recalculation is that if your car is not stopped, sometimes while recalculating, you may have already miss the next turn of the new calculated route to go back on route, getting in a sequence of many route recalculations that can distract you from keeping your eyes on the route which is much more important. I prefer to verify the route manually before riding additional km by being stopped somewhere and checking at it...