Anyone have issues with their nav traffic? Mine is almost always wrong. it never alerts me of upcomming dead stop traffic jams. it pretty much worthless.

2008 G37S

 

First off since you don't have it as part of your profile, where are you located? The three places where I have used the Nav traffic, Denver, Phoenix, and Orange County area, it has been perfect. Always showed when traffic was at a stand still or slow or congested.

 

sorry. i'll fix my profile. i am in so cal. I'm glad to hear your works perfectly. that tells me that i must have a defective unit...

i also want to add that when i try to use the nearby traffic info button i usually get a blank screen with no traffic data. i usually have to press it and exit the screen about 6 times before it displays nearby traffic info...

 

hmm, I think the nearby traffic info is populated by individuals that report this to XM. Things such as traffic accidents and construction for example. The traffic indicator worked great and was accurate for me. I didn't look at the nearby traffic info though. I was in Irvine and LA and it seemed to work great when I was on my road trip. You might just want to call XM and resync (not sure if that is the right term) your radio. I think you can do this online as well if you sign into XM's website. This might help.

 

From your menu go to Info > Traffic Info. that will show you more specific info. Remember that the traffic is not updated instantaneously, so don't expect to be alerted to a recent accident or traffic jam. It does work but it can only do so much.

 

The traffic congestion is updated instantly though because those are done through sensors that are located along the highway to tell when traffic gets congested and slows. This is the grean, orange (I think), and red lines that show up next to the highway in each direction.

 

In So Cal, everyone relies on the data provided by CalTran.

 

Only in a very small group of cities though. For the majority of the country congestion information isn't there, only accident and road information that is report by humans.

 

Nav Traffic is updated every 300 seconds (or 5 minutes). You can force an update by going to your "Info" "Traffic Info" and then "Nearby Traffic" TWICE. The first time it'll display from the last update, the second time will force an update. You'll notice it'll start loading up 50+ (if you're in a metro area like LA) on the second spin instead of the usual 5 or 10...

For those of you thinking of a hack for this to make it update every 10 seconds or whatever, hehe... I wish, I'm pretty sure it's regulated satellite side :P

-Nick

 

I hate to ask a dumb question, but I assume you are paying XM for the traffic info. Otherwise you don't get it.

 

Anyone know what type of info we get in South Florida because I don't find it very useful.

 

http://www.navteq.com/about/advanced_traffic.html

That's the actual service XM uses to provide their "NavTraffic" customers with traffic updates.

Everything listed there is basically how NavTraffic works. It's really a complex system with a lot of money involved as well as a lot of cameras and satellite traffic monitoring systems in place. It's not just reliant on people calling in and reporting traffic :P

-Nick

 

yeah i wish i couldda got this answer before lmaoo, i canceld it no nav traffic

 

I subscribed to it, I usually check the traffic info when I'm heading down to Miami from Boca to see if there are any accidents on 95 or turnpike. It does work but if you don't use the highways often it won't be worth the fee.

 

All I know is that when I had XM traffic it was at least an hour behind. It seems about as useful as sigalert.com.

In the Los Angeles area I find am radio more accurate and up to date.