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There's a signpost ahead. Your next stop: The Twilight Zone

 
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DaveMatthews
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 10:33 pm    Post subject: There's a signpost ahead. Your next stop: The Twilight Zone Reply with quote

Hi gang,

I was travelling from South Cumbria to Blackpool today and surprised to see my 940 decided that the fastest route was via the A6 and a number of country roads. Now admittedly this route is shorter in terms of distance but takes about ten minutes longer than my usual route of M6 and M55. Perhaps I had clicked the wrong routing option but, no, I had definitely selected "Fastest Route". Perhaps there was some sort of hold-up on the M6 or M55 but, if so, the TT wasn't saying so.

Well I just set off and got onto the M6 as normal. Unsurprisingly the TT kept trying to persuade me to exit at various junctions. It wasn't until I got on the M55 that things became, well, alarmingly odd...

Every time an A-road came close to the M55, the TT "jumped" the little blue car symbol over to it. About half-way along the M55, I decided to perform a hard reset. On booting back up, the TT announced "No route found"!?!?!?!!

As soon as I hit the exit slip at M55 Junction 4, the TT recalculated and, hey presto, all was back to normal.

On arriving at work, I got the TT to plot me a route back home and it happily offered the M55 and M6. So apparently it was only the westbound carriageway of the M55 that had entered the Twilight Zone this morning.

It will be interesting to see if this problem recurs on Monday.

--

Cheers


Dave
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mikealder
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Location: Blackpool , Lancs

PostPosted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 11:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The only thing that springs to mind are the specs cameras and speed restrictions at the M6/ M55 intersection causing delays so the Live system will go for what it considers a better route, depending upon where your destination is within the Fylde the M6/ A6/ A586 is often the choice a local would take Wink - Mike
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Andy_P
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 4:49 am    Post subject: Re: There's a signpost ahead. Your next stop: The Twilight Z Reply with quote

DaveMatthews wrote:

Every time an A-road came close to the M55, the TT "jumped" the little blue car symbol over to it.


This jumping onto adjacent roads is a symptom of a long-standing intermittent problem with some TomToms, where it thinks your position is 100-200 yards "off" in one particular direction. But because the TomTom is designed to "snap" your location to the nearest road it usually disguises the situation. It is only if it gets particularly bad or if there is a road running close and parallel to your actual road that you see it.

There are several previous topics about it (mostly by me!). Here's three:


http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=66867&highlight=200+yards

http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=64524&highlight=200

http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=70365&highlight=200+yards
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DaveMatthews
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 10:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks, chaps.

Mystery solved... well, sort of...

After a lot of tinkering around, I discovered that the westbound carriageway had been roadblocked on my unit for some reason. (Although I have MapShare enabled, it's set to only receive "trusted" amendments.) The reason it took me so long to discover that was that there was absolutely no graphical indication about this. The software is supposed to shade such roads in a lilac colour but this doesn't work if the road is a motorway. If you do block a motorway, the unit places a single, tiny little black triangle symbol on the road instead - unless you zoom in to maximum, you don't even see it!

However this state got set, it arguably highlights a flaw in TomTom's thinking. Given the "jumping" to adjacent roads, the unit seems to think that if you are driving down a road that has been marked as blocked, then that road no longer actually exists!

Just as a side-issue, if the unit has calculated a route that caters for a certain road being blocked, if you then unblock it, the unit does NOT automatically recalculate - you have to force it to do so. Not a serious problem - just a little oversight in the software.

--

Cheers,


Dave


Last edited by DaveMatthews on Sat Mar 28, 2009 10:39 am; edited 3 times in total
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mikealder
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 10:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Isn't map share wonderful, some dip**** blocks the M55 because a small section of it was closed for resurfacing for a few days, once uploaded TomTom then distribute this to everyone - Result being lots of messed up maps, its a real shame this sort of thing happens, Map Share is a great idea but poorly implemented - Mike
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DaveMatthews
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 10:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

In fairness though, Mike, the M55 had been problematic the other week and was definitely worth avoiding if you were travelling west (to Blackpool or Lytham). Having said that, it's been absolutely fine this week, so the block should have been lifted - maybe that never made it onto the "Trusted" list for some reason?

The real problem here is the lack of graphical indication that the road has been marked as blocked. Had the normal lilac stripes been displayed, I would have sussed out straight away what was going on.

--

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Dave
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mikealder
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 10:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I got stuck on the M55 last week due to the stupidity of closing it down to one lane, HD Traffic had it showing 2 minutes delay but I wasted at least 20 mins sat still.
It will be interesting to see what they are adding to the road side though, about a mile from the West bound exit there is a new concrete hard standing with no vehicle access with some large rings secured into the ground - Mike
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DaveMatthews
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 11:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

mikealder wrote:
I got stuck on the M55 last week due to the stupidity of closing it down to one lane, HD Traffic had it showing 2 minutes delay but I wasted at least 20 mins sat still.


Yes, we got caught in that! It's a debate for another topic, really, but I have a suspicion that if you happen to be at a standstill or driving at less than, say, 3 mph when your unit or Vodaphone is "sampled" (once every three minutes, I think?), rather than recognising this as a serious hold-up, TT assumes you have actually parked your vehicle and therefore ignores you...

On Friday evening of last week there were widespread problems just north of Preston. The A6 was at a virtual standstill, yet nothing showed up on HD. Meanwhile the M55, M6 and various other A-roads in the area were also affected but were moving a little faster and *were* flagged up on my unit. QED?

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Dave
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