Sat Navs and widths

[Dorwyn]

I have a couple of sat navs, the earlier TomTom was the cheapest available at the time, no dimension capability. The newer one has this capability. I still find I use the simpler TomTom more often, even though it has got me into some tight scrapes. Literally so last month in the mountains above Lake Piano/Como in Italy, where I got stuck between two houses in a small village, and had to drive through badly scratching along two windows.

Rather than set certain widths, and leaving it to the machine to decide, it seems to me that you should be able to simply specify the choice of main (two lane) roads only. I'm not sure if there is this capability in others, or if I have misconstrued the settings on my two. Another reason is that both sat navs have an unwanted tendency to take smaller roads as you get closer to the target, or even take you off a main road and onto a smaller road, and later put you back on the same main road.

After I had had the aforesaid incident in Italy, I entered various widths to see how bad the roads were. At 2.4m wide, it said no route possible from my location. This turned out to be wrong. I think I got down to 2.2m before it accepted a route. I then decided to go down the north side of Lake Como. A 2 lane road apparently. Oh boy! There were HUGE trucks coming the other way. In at least 4 villages traffic was held up for ages while these trucks came through. Being a scaredy cat I elected to get as close to the wall as possible, and leave it to the trucks. They were amazing!! No further scratches. So the 2 lane spec would have made no difference there.

 

[wiljoy]

Any satnav that boasts to consider your dimensions could be lying. A friend of mine collates information for road restrictions throughout Europe.
The satvav programmer's send out requests to local authorities for road specifications.
If the request aren't returned then no dimensions are inputed.
This leaves us with false information and very scary routes.

 

[iandsm]

I don't think its a case of lying, my Garmin will warn me if it does not know the suitability of a road, whether or not that road is on the route it chooses or one I chose. Obviously when there is no map information or a request for information has not been returned the device can hardly plan to avoid a narrow road.

 

[tacr2man]

I have a Garmin Dezl You can put in specs , It is very good on weights , and heights , even warning you of ignoring on route . The width thing is a different matter , as unless there is a specific posted width restriction , as mostly seen in built up areas, it just seems to rely on using the major roads on any specific route, same with lengths . I have run it alongside a garmin nuvi with no ability to enter specs . That's where I have been able to spot differences . It also warns of steep gradients , or crosswinds ahead

 

[ceejayt]

I posted elsewhere about Sygic Truck which I have and which has an RV mode. This is an expensive app (£179 for 3 year licence).

Our van is 9m and 7t. After many problems they admitted in an email that their maps (and any other app that uses maps from the same source) does not take account of over 3.5t weight and happily sends your 7t vehicle down the wrong road.

Their only answer was for me to select truck mode. This is better but chooses strange routes also based on loading and unloading/delivery times in towns and cities.

It has also been very poor at bad traffic rerouting and sending me down too narrow roads.

I have received a beta update - cannot tell yet whether any of this has been resolved except maybe the rerouting. Time will tell.

I run google Maps simultaneously to check the traffic and route which really helps

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}