[Drivingforfun]

Whenever I use my sat nav and the route follows a certain road (which I use often) with a crossroads on it that I would simply go "straight" at, the sat nav would have me turn left into a village, drive round in a loop and come back to the crossroads and turn left again, effectively the same way I'd have gone if I went straight in the first place.

I have always ignored this and simply gone straight on and the nav always updates and knocks 2-3 minutes off the journey time when I refuse to turn into the village.

Any ideas as to why it would have me do this? I have not had it happen elsewhere, it just seems to have some sort of desire for me to take a detour to look at this village instead of driving past it.

[Rolebama]

Some sat nav manufacturers are aware of road network changes before they come into play. The unfortunate thing is that the road network change may then get cacelled after the sat nav is produced.
An example of the changes: I bought my own sat nav about a year before the changing of road numbers at junctions 8 and 9 on the A1(M), but it showed the changes before they happened. Similarly it showed the Tesco car park, new road layout and bus routes in Norwich about six months before those changes came into effect. Those are two examples of the many I found.

[Beelzebub]

The most likely cause is a simple database error.

The road segment that you're being routed to avoid will have had its default speed accidentally set too low, e.g. 6 mph instead of 60.

[Rolebama]

Re Beelzebub's post above. It reminded me that when I first bought and used mine, it sent me through St Albans along some very narrow cobbled streets, as it also did through Hitchin. The day after I went through the settings and found various preferred speeds were set unrealistically low. I set them all to a preferred speed to 5mph less than speed limits, and on the next journey it directed me around St Albans and up the side of Hitchin and kept me on decent roads for the entire journey.

[Santa]

Satnav mapping is at least a year and often three years behind. This assumes that you have the latest maps in the first place.

My 2015 car needs a new memory card to update the maps and this currently costs around £20. More recent versions of the same car can be updated remotely.

[Marc]

Originally Posted by Rolebama

Re Beelzebub's post above. It reminded me that when I first bought and used mine, it sent me through St Albans along some very narrow cobbled streets, as it also did through Hitchin. The day after I went through the settings and found various preferred speeds were set unrealistically low. I set them all to a preferred speed to 5mph less than speed limits, and on the next journey it directed me around St Albans and up the side of Hitchin and kept me on decent roads for the entire journey.

Ah that is interesting @Rolebama I wonder if that's why Google Maps seems to like taking me down the windiest lanes it can find.....? I'm going to have a little dig into the settings