Ok 6AM Sunday morning on deserted back roads. I think I saw a total of 1 car in about 8 miles. About 4 miles into the 8 miles I get a "traffic jam ahead" alert from the navigation system.
Are you kidding me? Surely won't be paying $$$$ for that service. So far in almost 3 months I haven't had this actually be useful even once. Either it is a false alarm, or you are stuck in traffic and it's obvious anyway and too late to do anything about it.
It was useless to me as well. If you let Sirius expire, you won't get annoyed with the "traffic jam ahead" notice. I like Waze to help navigate the quickest routes.
if the municipal / private traffic monitoring services feed out garbage information to your nav device you will get garbage information from it.
I use a old garmin with FM based traffic receiver. that runs with "Navteq" traffic services.
Case in point: in NYC on the FDR drive
It has sensed and verbally stated "traffic ahead" just before I have physically seen it. then re-routed me into the Bronx and around the jam adding only about 10 minutes to my route vs. 40 -60 minutes of stop and go. and that was including the 5 minutes I spent behind the traffic jam in slow moving stuff.
a couple years ago, I was in New Jersey and Navteq and must have been in some kind of dispute with them as I got jack sh;t out of it when every road in the north central part of the state had slow moving backed up river flood water on it. (Raritan basin, and only I-287 has a tall enough bridge to escape it, ...every single 2-8 lane road was as stand still or a 1mph crawl)
maybe you should check and see what works best in Renton or Seattle,...the answer maybe to velcro a garmin over your Subaru / Toyota Nav screen.:smile2:
Edit: and I still travel in plenty of places with sporadic cell service at best.
I've got about another month before the subscription is supposed to expire. I never listen to satellite radio stations, so I have no intention of renewing.
I've heard for some people it seems they don't turn it off though even after the free period expires.
I've got about another month before the subscription is supposed to expire. I never listen to satellite radio stations, so I have no intention of renewing.
Traffic works OK. Shows you the yellow and red of slow moving traffic. Is fairly accurate and up to date. It will offer alternative routes and allows you to set the parameters for offering you an alternative, tell you time and distance changes of the alternative and allow you to preview it on the screen. The Nav is fairly accurate on arrival time calculating the traffic etc. Good basic Nav system.
All the "traffic jam ahead" warnings can be reduced or eliminated by going through the warnings menus and turning off those you don't want. Some apply to areas not directly on your route.
Subaru offered a lot of information and makes that the default but they do allow you to customize it.
The Garmin FM-based system seems to work reasonably well in the Seattle area. I have had it re-route successfully around a traffic jam. Occasionally, it will report a traffic jam when there is none, but it is rare. It isn't perfect.
Yea I found a setting to turn off that warning (or at least I think that's what it does).
Still not something I'd pay a subscription fee for sure. If I need to look at a traffic map I have phone apps and will usually check before I head out.
It doesn't do me much good once I'm in it anyway since there aren't great alternate routes, or if I hit traffic I can just take an exit and go via back roads, which might be more pleasant but usually doesn't really save time in the end unless you have a total stoppage.
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