Accuracy of the traffic reporting on the Garmin nuvi is ... ?

I was just wondering how people felt the accuracy (hence usefulness) of the
traffic reporting is on the Garmin nuvi GPS.

I bought a nuvi a few weeks ago and drove about a thousand miles so far and
have found the traffic reporting to be, well, just so so.

Sometimes it's nice that it says "45 minute delay" because I then know
there is really "center lane blocked" or "accident" or "construction", etc.

But, the five and ten and fifteen minute delays seem to vaporize by the
time I get to them.

What I've found myself doing is not trusting the traffic and crossing my
fingers by not detouring when I could, and sometimes running into the
bottleneck (although it never seems to be as bad as they say it is) and
THEN doing a detour around if I can.

Basically, I'd roughly give the traffic accuracy a score of 40% or so,
meaning that more than half the time, it's wrong.

How's YOUR accuracy on your traffic? Am I an isolated case?

Another related question is WHERE do they get the traffic information
anyway?

Do they have an army of ears around the world listening and reporting?

Or is there a central service that does this?

How?

This is not a Garmin service at all. It depends on what country you're in
and what local services are offered there. Here in Belgium we have two (in
fact 3) different languages (in fact 3) and they cover only their own
territory.You can imagine the quality of info around Brussels, where it
depends on what station you're tuned on.
Anyway your experience with TMC is about the same over here. Traffic info is
sometime right sometimes obsolete.
Google for TMC and RDS, you will find a lot of information.

sorry a word missing:

This is not a Garmin service at all. It depends on what country you're in
and what local services are offered there. Here in Belgium we have two
providers free (in
fact 3) and different languages (in fact 3) and they cover only their own
territory.You can imagine the quality of info around Brussels, where it
depends on what station you're tuned on.
Anyway your experience with TMC is about the same over here. Traffic info is
sometime right sometimes obsolete.
Google for TMC and RDS, you will find a lot of information.

wrote:


You didn't say what country you are in...that would help! Also, what
service are you using and which model Nuvi?