Live Traffic is a Farce, But Garmin is Good

A reciever is just a reciever.

The old adages "Garbage in, Garbage out" or "Stupid is as Stupid Does" ring quite true when trying to depend on gadgets like this to avoid huge jams. First and foremost, take a data provider like Navteq, the new owners of Traffic.com and makers of GPS maps.

They get their information on live traffic data through various sources. Whether they purchase it from another supplier, as they used to do with Traffic.com, or from state DOT sources, it is collected in too many ways.

Sensor data can be tricky, as not sensors are equal, and all states do not use the same sensors. Some are up to date and some are as old as the technology.

Another collection method is having engineers drive around and look for traffic jams and record the speeds via GPS, and to record any incidents such as accidents or fires in person. Which in my mind makes the data highly subjective, as the collection methods are highly subjective.

So enter the Garmin traffic receiver. One will need a power source and a USB connection to the Nuvi device. I would think perhaps that it could have sucked it from a USB port as do many GPS devices such as Tomtom, but oh well.

Previous GPS antennas by Garmin hung out the door and magnetically sat atop the car while plugged into a cigarette lighter and connected via serial port to a laptop.

Once this is done, it is assumed here that you have an active account with Garmin to get the Live Traffic Data services. As with any GPS it will take a bit, usually not long to lock on and begin receiving the data for display.

The display looks very similar to what you see when you turn on the news with a road map of sorts with pretty colors on it to show you where the jam is at. Depending on the color, it shows you if it is heavy, almost stopped, or free flow traffic in those areas that are covered.

Red means "oh man dinner will be cold", yellow means " If I stomp on it I may get home before the red hits", and green means "no problemo."

So the receiver is good at what it does, and that is to grab the data from the source and display it to the driver. Try to remember that most people are alerted to a clear road if the flow is above 35 mph. , another subjective input.

But back to the data. I was driving in Miami where the highway north showed a dead stop. But I had no choice, I had to go north. However, it was as free as free could be, even after refreshing it. More than a few other times I thought I was to be free, and saw much green. But was stopped deader than a door nail.

This due to the industry that provides the data. Maybe someone saw what they thought was an accident but was just a stalled car. It gets reported as an accident though it is not flow impacting. Also, take a city where the data shows only certain roads and areas due to sensor location. You may only get a small chunk of the city.

The data shown may not be real time or even close to real time. many providers use historical data as a filler, guessing as do the weathermen that on this date and time of day it "should" be congested or not. And it will be reported as such.

Much of the construction is not updated properly. You may get rerouted to a construction zone, or into urban streets and a jungle of red lights to avoid construction that has been completed.

Besides, as I was running through Miami or New York, I saw a huge red line and decided to follow the rerouting suggested by the GPS. Well, I found that all the locals already know these tricks, and by the time I listened to the received data I am again in traffic following the half million people who got to the "short cut" before I did.

I see no real reason for what they deem "Live" traffic updates. It remains subjective to various engineers and scattered sources who do nothing more than try to prove their company is better. Sometimes with false reports, accidents that never occurred get reported.

Incidents and traffic data does not always clear right away either. Which means you can think you will be stuck and fly through or vice versa. Using historical data is no better than the weather man who says there is a 45% chance of something happening. 50% raw data, 45% guessing, and the other 5% who knows.

All the locals already know the streets better than Garmin and will be clogging up the bypasses before Garmin ever reports it. It is a distraction to keep looking for colored patterns anyway while driving along.

Though the receiver works fine, the service that provides it will never be able to give what we need on live updates. The industry is riddled with problems and there are no standardized methods of collection across the board.

Though this receiver gets a good rating from me, the technology will be free to the public before anyone dumps the money into it that it will need to provide true live traffic. And we already have that with Am radio and helicopters.

Save your money and use it on better speakers. Otherwise all you are doing is spending a wad to have another computer tell you what you already know while you are standing in traffic. You will be late for dinner.