so I've had my TL for 48 hours, and I'm wondering how accurate the traffic flow data is. I live in San Diego, and on my route home I go north on the 163 where it merges with the 15. Due to construction and traffic volume, flow generally slows down for a couple of miles past the marine air station. San Diego is a city covered by traffic flow information.

Today I was going home, and for a couple of miles past the 163/15 merge traffic was slowed down to 20 to 30 MPH. However the navigation system showed the light blue the entire way, even though traffic was slower than free flowing speeds.

How accurate is the traffic flow information? 1.5 hours later I was on some surface streets and decided to look at the traffic incidents. It appears now it was alerting on that stretch, but I didn't flip to the map and visually verify it.

Thankfully the rest of my daily commute is free flowing 90% of the time, so I don't have any more data points.

 

In LA it's not reliable at all. I was dead stop for at least 3 minutes on the 101 FWY Eastbound and the indicator never changed from blue, nor did the yellow caution indicator come up reporting the accident? The other thing in LA is that even if the FWY indicator shows slow traffic, a mile later it could all open up, so I don't rely on it at all, it's just impossible to be that accurate. The weather indicator is also useless for my area, there is no drastic or dangerous weather changes in southern california. Now if there was a earthquake warning indicator, I'd tune into that...;-)

 

I live in SD as well, it never worked correctly for me either, it seemed to be very delayed.

 

I have found NAV Traffic as well as the statsion they broadcast traffic on to be weak at best, the lag is still too long.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that isn't Acura's fault it is it? The technology is in place, but the updates can only be recieved as fast as they are sent. I didn't think Acura was the source of the weather/traffic it was XM or someone who subs through XM.

 

True, I am not faulting Acura, I am faulting XM and I assume they get their info from local DOT and as slow as they are is as slow as XM gets it then puts it in their systems.

 

Well today the 163/15 merge was slow, and it did alert on the nav unit. Although the stretch that was slow was longer than indicated on the display.

I've also noticed that it has alerted me to traffic conditions then says "free flowing traffic". How is free flowing traffic an alert?

 

the free flowing traffic alert sometimes comes up because there might of previously been an accident nearby indicating clearance now.