Just for the fun of it, I had Suzie TomTom (that's Susan's new household name) give me a route to the dentist yesterday. Heck, I know how to get there, I just want to get some experience with areas I already know to get a feel for what Suzie will likely do to me in areas that I don't know!
Suzie assiduously avoided a stretch of road that would have taken me directly to the highway towards the dentist. She insisted on trying to get me to make a left turn (about 5 times) to take me substantially out of my way to use a road about 1 mile east that she thought a better choice than the far better one I was already using. She certainly didn't have any heartburn about forcing me to make left turns.
The road I was on was a simple "city street", but one on the periphery of the city that has few lights and a 45mph limit. As I ignored her and had begun to travel on this road, Suzie was attempting to force me into a 2 mile detour solely because she saw a road marked as a US highway, even though it goes straight through the middle of town, had a traffic light about every 2 blocks, and has a 25mph speed limit!
As I noted in another thread yesterday, the shortcomings of the routing appear largely related to
a) the lack of knowledge of actual speed limits, and attempts to categorize roads into three simple (too simple) types, and associating a fixed speed with each. In it's North American trim (I hear differently about the European model), the 720 has no real idea about actual speed limits, and of course,
b) the 720 has no idea at all about the frequency of stop lights and other fixed impediments to speedy travel.
c) there really are some mapping errors that cause the 720 to be unaware that certain routes are even possible.
So the routing can be really goofy at times, especially in town.
As a result, there's no question that each of us can find better in-town routing from our own personal experience than a TT720 is likely to find. That kind of "insider knowledge" will nearly always produce a better result. These devices, at their current state of the art, really should not be expected to produce the best routes when it comes to "quickest time".
They are very useful when navigating in unknown territory, however. Just be aware that when you ask for "quickest route", while there's a 99.99% chance that the 720 will get you there, a local could probably have gotten you there a bit quicker.
It will be a while before the state of mapping and real-time traffic information makes it possible to say with any certainty that a GPS nav unit will be able to produce as good a result as a native could with any frequency. In the meanwhile, it's going to be necessary to accept a change in expectations, and understand that units like this are good for routing in unknown territory, and with real-time traffic working decently, avoiding messy jams that can be routed around.
