[toomer]

Curious on other folks' experience with the in-car Nav system, when paired with the Sirius TravelLink services (which includes traffic updates). When you ask to plot a new destination, does the navigation system actually consult the current traffic data available at the time it starts plotting the route?

Reason I'm asking -- I'm in DC, and every day, there's traffic *somewhere*. But the in-car system has never taken me through any alternate routes, or alerted me of new traffic events during my commute. As far as I can tell from my experiences ... the traffic data from Sirius simply gets painted as the yellow & red indicators on the roads indicating there's traffic.

I'd been using Navigon on my iPhone for traffic avoidance before getting my new Mariner ... and it really worked well. It would consider all of the traffic data it had, and plot several possible routes. Even if it I took it's best guess ... more often than not I would end up taking a different way home from work at least once a week, as it routed me around various jams.

With the Mercury system - same route home, every single time for over a month now.

This makes me think that the Ford/Mercury system isn't actually all that advanced in its consideration of traffic data. Any thoughts?

 

[TR993]

I have experienced the same thing....the travel link "traffic" does indeed tell you where traffic is bad....so you just have to jump off the current route and let the Nav find a new route. As far as the Nav. considering traffic...I don't think there is any cross "intelligence" within the system. Although someone here may have a better opinion due to my brief time owning the Escape.

 

[toomer]

I think you may be right. Digging into things a bit deeper, I found this announcement from Ford:

Traffic Data: SIRIUS Travel Link combines real-time traffic speed and flow data with accident and incident information to allow the user to navigate around congested areas.

http://media.ford.com/article_display.c ... e_id=27489

What's noticeably missing is any indication of the *system* navigating you around congested areas. Apparently you have to do it in advance before you leave ... and hope that nothing pops up on your journey home, or stare at your Nav screen constantly (certainly a safety hazard) to see if any of the roads ahead are painted yellow or red.

Hmph. I guess this makes my decision to purchase a Sirius subscription after the free trial runs out an easy one .... nope.

Back to Navigon & the iPhone, plus Pandora, RadioTime, Slacker Radio, etc. etc.

 

[toomer]

I may have been too hasty in my previous assessment. Tonight as I punched in my route home, the system popped up this alert on the bottom of the screen...

 

[TR993]

Awesome. Thanks for the update!