Interstate avoidance for Nuvi

n4khq

Basecamp and the outdoor models have an avoidance for instates in the routing setup. The Nuvi line only has avoided major highways which avoided more than just interstates and really puts you on the backroads. Looks like it could be a firmware upgrade. I think it would be a feature several users would appreciate. I sent a suggestion to Garmin is there anything else I can do to get the feature added?

Thanks

Boyd

n4khq said:

I sent a suggestion to Garmin is there anything else I can do to get the feature added?

Frankly, no. Sorry to be so cynical, but I think you also just wasted your time sending the suggestion. I can't recall Garmin ever seeking input and allowing that to shape the features on their automotive devices. The classic example was the introduction of the "trip planner" circa 2010 to replace their traditonal "route planner". The new "trip" format was completely incompatble with existing routes in Garmin's classic format and there was no ability to exchange "trips" between the device and computer in Basecamp or Mapsource.

They just decided to do this on their own, it was a complete surprise to users. There were a lot of complaints right away, and Garmin initially dismissed them by saying nobody used Basecamp to create routes for the Nuvi anyway. It took two years for them to offer bi-directional transfer of "trips" one the nuvis and Basecamp. And it took another year or two for them to finally make a robust system as good as the traditional "routes" on old model Nuvis.

None of the improvements in the trip planner were ever migrated backwards to older model Nuvis either, although it could have easily been done with a firmware update. So, using their top model as an example, the 2012 Nuvi 3590 still has the old, broken Trip Planner but the 2013 Nuvi 3597 has the new improved Trip Planner.