Traffic - without route planned?

[Rick F.]

I searched and couldn't find this anywhere.

In order for traffic (the RDC type or FM) to alert you of any traffic conditions, do you have to have a route planned? Or... will it alert you if you just happen to be driving on an affected road?

Thanks.

 

[dhn]

Only on route, Rick. (to my understanding)

 

[Rick F.]

Ok, thanks dhn,

I'll check it out tomorrow on the way to church where there's some construction warning on I95 going N. Tomorrow I won't enter a route, just have it on.

 

[gatorguy]

There is at least one pnd traffic service (MSNDirect/Garmin) that will alert you to traffic ahead on the road you're traveling even with no destination set. I've found it helpful knowing there's traffic holdups some distance ahead of me, allowing time to avoid them (if they really exist). But that's not available to TomTom, and is being discontinued entirely by the end of next year for everyone.

 

[mvl]

Tomtoms will show traffic ahead of you visually (your road will be colored with the traffic color on the map).

However, Tomtom developers assume you always have a route set, as one of the key selling points of Tomtoms is that IQroutes often finds a better route to your destination that you'd think of yourself.

So they don't speak traffic alerts ahead of you, as the Tomtom doesn't know that you intend to drive straight.