SatNav Data Question

[Turtle Shed]

Hello all, I hope this is the right forum.

This cropped up at a Parish Counil meeting, and whilst I've done a Google, and asked ChatGPT (fairly helpful) I'd like some PH comment please.

In a nutshell: There are two roads through a village, one is more suited to traffic (wider/straighter/better lit/more passing places). SatNav has been routing people (and I guess we're talking delivery drivers) along the more suitable road for quite some time, many years I guess. Recently though it appears that traffic is being routed down the less suitable road by SatNav. (I assume various SatNav systems, doubt they're all using Google Maps, but you never know).

Speed limits are the same (30mph), and as far as I am aware, nothing physical has changed. These are pretty quiet country lanes after all.

Thoughts welcome, or even just a suggestion as to how to investigate further.

Cheers.

[charltjr]

Try using the nav apps yourselves and see which way it routes you?

The systems are adaptive, so if it knows from the data it gets back from journeys that the “worse” route is slightly shorter/quicker then it will use it.

[Decky_Q]

Also depends on setting in the nav unit, whether to use shortest route, fastest route etc

[lancslad58]

How do you know it's Satnav sending people down a particular route and not just drivers deciding which way to go?

[Turtle Shed]

lancslad58 said:

How do you know it's Satnav sending people down a particular route and not just drivers deciding which way to go?

Purely from a report by a resident. Local people would take the easier/wider/straighter road unless they lived on the other one. Now we are told that there has been a marked increase in commercial traffic on the more difficult route.

I'll go and take a look, trying two cars inbuilt SatNavs, plus Waze and Google Maps.

Cheers all.