When the RL first arrived on dealer lots, I distinctively remember people saying that the real time traffic system will automatically re-route your path if you programmed in a route and the traffic system showed heavy traffic or an incident along the chosen route.

Personally, I haven't been able to make this happen on my RL and I'm wondering if it's actually true.

Anyone know if the system will automatically re-route you around traffic incidents? Is there something special that's required other than programming the route? And lastly, under what circumstances would the system re-route the path (incidents such as accidents & weather or just jammed sections).

 

No. It will not re-route around traffic incidents. Unfortunate, but no.

It will only reroute if you miss a turn/exit or if you tell the navi that you need an alternate route (detour)

 

if it dosn't really tell u? what is the point of Real Time Traffic.....how exactly does the whole system work? does it just show u where an accident is....

 

Basically. It will point out a speed range that a specific part of the highway is going. It also displays traffic incidents and accidents/other problems. IMO I find the system useless now. I just went to check the traffic here and it showed slow speeds yet when I got on the highway it was flowing perfectly at 70mph.

 

There is a roundabout way to do avoid traffic.

Most of the roads that offer flow data are major highways. The nav system will allow you to calculate a route to your destination while avoiding highways. So, if the incident/poor flow is on a highway, you can use the "avoid highways" option to get around that traffic. You would just need to set a destination in the nav. I did this once and it actually worked......it took me the long way through some back roads, but it was better than a closed highway.

 

TL and TSX have this.....i just don't understand the point of NAVTRAFFIC, does it atleast highlight the highways that are busy?

 

Yes, along side teh highways that are part of the coverage there is blue, orange and red lines. blue represents free flowing, orange represents a slow down, red represetns damn near a parking lot. (There are actual sleep ranges that represent each color). The 06' RL will display green instead of blue.

 

I updated to the latest DVD for my '05 and it has some new commands and updated colors... (green for free flowing, etc)

Mel

 

Where did you pick up the update?

 

www.acuranavi.com you have to buy the navi dvd update.

 

Umm, yeah, I know were you CAN buy it but I was wondering where Mel got his update.

 

From the Acura Website.. took about a week.

Mel

 

I generally just use the display traffic list voice command to see if there are any incidents. Those tend to be the ones that make the bigest difference in traffic flow. I find the map flow data to be about 70% accurate, I am sure it will get better with time.

 

Yes. Me too. The new software allows you to access that command by pressing the control wheel.

The voice recognition does not always work when on a noisy road... (and there are plenty around Seattle.)

Mel

 

I talked with the NavTraffic guys at CES back in January. They said they were working on a release that would provide "Fastest Route" with rerouting. He acknowledged that they needed to improve the quality of their data suppliers so that we wouldn't be rerouted away from non incidents.

 

I drive around LA and the Navtraffic flow on the screen is a good as useless. Incidents are too late to be useful and yesterday all lanes of the Hollywood freeway were closed by Caltrans but it never showed in my car. I too have seen reduced traffic flow on the screen and I was the only car on the freeway at 3 o'clock in the morning. You can see the same traffic flow data on the TV news but because you are watching in your living room, you never know if it is accurate. I would hate to have to drive a detour because my RL says that their is an incident or traffic flow problems and the information is inaccurate.
I would be interested to see how many people intend to renew their subscription to this bogus and useless system?

 

Somebody had created a poll on this recently. Do a search and you should find it.

 

Mel, have you found the dvd upgrade to have enough changes and value to justify the cost? I agree with you about Seattle roads being noisy. A lot of older concrete freeways instead of the newer quieter rubberized asphalt that you find in other cities where they are still improving and building roads. Seattle doesn't do roads or even trains, it does buses instead.

db22, As far as I know we haven't been required to start paying for the Navtraffic and perhaps this is being deferred because the service remains pretty unreliable, at least in the Seattle area. As I have said before, I consider Navtraffic still to be in a beta test mode and is not yet completed. I have actually seen considerable improvement the last couple of months so I remain hopeful that it will soon get to the point where a driver can rely on the information displayed. When we get to that point I think it will be worth a small extra charge per month for drivers in cities like LA and Seattle where such timely information can be really useful.

 

It's hard to imagine how road speed data gets corrupted. You have sensors in the road that determine the average speed of the traffic. That signal goes to some processing station and from there it gets uploaded to XM. From there on it goes up to the satellite and down to us. Either sensors are broken and report bogus data or data is getting mangled during processing. Another cause could be that some sensors are offline sometimes and the system reports the last known data point.

On the other hand the last few days I've seen areas that didn't have coverage that were covered the day before. Of course XM is clueless and all the offer to do is reset my radio remotely.