GPS POI Podventures!

 

I have had the U-turn command repeated many times too. 

 

And a lot of RECALCULATING.    She sounds annoyed.  

While some of this may be fixable with updates, some of it is just plain garbage data.  GPS folks (and map folks, and so on) get their data from a few major sources, and those sources get their data from Federal/State/Local GIS departments.  When bad data is given, there's not much you or your GPS can do about it.

For instance, when I get a new GPS, I tend to use it around town, on familiar roads, so I can familiarize myself with the GPS' features and prompts in a friendly setting.  Every GPS I've ever had, on the way to my parents' house, tries to take me down a non-existent road.  The road in question was "on the books" with the parish (no counties in LA) sometime between my brother's birth and mine - let's say 1963 - but never got built.  Still, it must have made it into some database, so it's now in our GPS.  The same thing can happen with block/street numbering, and is often the case with re-alignments, which brings up another thing about how these things work - the GPS knows where you are (roughly), and it contains a base map.  It uses some fancy logic to determine which road you might be taking based on your heading and tries to place your "dot" on the map in the correct location.  If you have a weakened signal (as you might in a downtown full of high rises) and/or in a place with small blocks and streets close together (as you might in a downtown), your GPS' estimate of where you are, or how far to the next turn, can be impacted.

Keep your eyes open, read signs, be familiar with the area, and use your GPS as an aid and you'll be fine.

 

Good point. With my GPS I now have 2 female voices telling me what to do instead of 1. And when I do what one of them tells me to do, the other one always seems to get upset .

 

-- Steve