Can the 07 NAV in the G35 guide you around to void the traffic?

 

If the traffice shows up on the traffic info screen, then yes. However, if it is not mentioned on the info screen, then XM is not aware of the traffic and thus can't give an alternate route. That is my understanding, at least.

 

A lot of the time it can't do jack for you either...

All the times I've asked for a traffic detour it told me that it couldn't find an alternate route. If you do a "regular" detour then you can tell the car to try to send you around the next 1/2 to 5 miles and it will try to snake you around whatever is going on. That generally works "ok", but most of the time I know better than the car.

NavTraffic is really good if you have REALLY bad stuff going on ahead... accidents with lane closures, the road is closed altogether, etc. Stuff like that is picked up by (I guess) the XM traffic guys off the wire and they send the info down to the cars. Just today it told me about an accident with 2 lanes closed a mile ahead before the news guys said anything about it... gives you time to work your way out of the mess before you're in the middle of it.

Now what would ROCK -- which you will never see -- is if it was 2-way or more, like that whole "vehicle-to-vehicle" communications that some companies are working on. So if I'm on 95 North and traffic is doing 20mph up ahead, and you're on a parallel/alternate road and you're doing 50mph, your car tells the XM guys "oh snap it's good over here" and they tell my car to tell me "oh snap it's good over there, you wanna go that way instead?"

Now that would be something to see.

 

It will guide you around congested spots depending on what your coverage is and how "real time" the traffic information is. The problem is it does not tell you that it is doing so. For me, I thought there was something wacky with the nav when it was telling me to go the long way to my known destination ... so I ignored it and went my usual path then ran into a traffic jam caused by an accident. I did not bother to go back and verify this when traffic was clear though.

For the system to work ... you have to give it your destination each and every time ... even if you know where you are going. Sure, you can save your destination, but most of us will probably not run the nav on our daily commute to work.

 

Assuming you are subscribed to NAV Traffic, yes it can. There is an option under the Navigation menu to either use current traffic conditions when calculating a route to a destination, or not.

 

I cancelled my nav traffic once my 3 month trial was over. I'm not paying an extra 3 bucks a month to know if there's a traffic jam ahead. There always is. Every day. In the same place. And it takes me the same amount of time every day.

Like someone said above, it would be useful for accidents.. but traffic, not so much. You know where your commute traffic is going to be, and you know what the best routes are.

What was really ironic about it was, when my XM trial expired, I was sitting in said traffic. The woman asked if I wanted to renew my traffic subs... and I couldn't stop laughing.

 

That's what I've noticed too, there really isn't much one can do in the bay area when 101 is jammed. Taking 280 is just too far unless 101 is closed or something. My wife still likes it though, I guess she just likes to know why she's stuck in traffic. Helps me a bit cause usually she calls me up and asks me to look up why she's stuck.

 

In houston during rush hour there are always the same roads to avoid if you can. But we use Nav traffic mostly for the uptodate information on accidents, construction, etc...

This it does very well and we can avoid those roads.

 

Just curious, how much is everyone that has the traffic option paying for this service and are you getting the XM Radio along with it?

 

They still don't have this service in Canada do they..?

 

This is from XM's website:

XM NavTraffic now in 50 Markets in the USA and Canada
XM NavTraffic, is now available in 50 metropolitan areas across the USA, and for the first time has expanded to cover major Canadian markets. For more details, check out our Market Coverage.


http://www.xmradio.com/navtraffic/index.xmc

For Canada it won't show traffic flow but will show incidents.

 

On a side note, showing traffic flow is entirely dependent on a city's highway network having traffic flow sensors, nothing to do with XM.