Re: Reporting City Navigator Map Errors

[Phillip Coetser]

Hi guys, Phillip. Well done to Frans Viljoen and Robert de Vries, in establishing contact with Garmin SA, with regards to HERE map errors. I'm sure that admin representatives will ask a lot of questions to the relevant person/s with regards to the above. My concern is, we get map updates, we do not know what's been updated from the previous map set to the new map set, and how do the map designers from HERE update the maps, is it only with individual persons reporting map errors? Two weeks ago, no offense to HERE maps, I saw a Tom Tom vehicle in Edenvale, Gauteng, and the vehicle logo's indicated that they were busy reconciling routes/areas. I wonder if HERE maps does the same. Never the less, I hope that this meeting will clarify some/all problems and we as Garmin users gain with better mapsets.

Regards

[Jan Horn]

The problem we experience is South Africa is a complex one where the classification of roads and your preference settings play a very big role in how a PDA will route to a destination. My Nuvi 52, and I have no reason to believe that any other Garmin model will do it differently, routing from Welkom to Knysna, with "Shorter Distance" selected, takes you from Uniondale along a dirt track just outside Knysna that even for a 4x4 is virtually undrivable, and this with "avoid unpaved roads" selected. Selecting faster time give you the same result. The only way to avoid this is by selecting a via point in George so that it will navigate along the N9.If you know the area and which roads you want to use along your route you can manipulate the PND to stay on the right track but If your are a stranger to the area or even an overseas visitor errors like that can be disastrous. What is needed is for the map data vendor, a representative of Garmin and some government authority to sit around a table and decide on a common language where it come to classification of roads. The dilemma both Garmin and the Map data vendors face is that they have to try to adapt their routing algorithm and road classifications to cater for the various classification used by all the various countries their product is used. If some world wide roads classification standards could be established I am sure it would make live much easier for all and sundry. It is not just the various GPS'r vendors that faces these problems remember that more than 90% of all cell phone users now also have access to "GPS" technology and maps.