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OT: Which Tom-Tom for pedestrians/bicycle riders?

OT: Which Tom-Tom for pedestrians/bicycle riders?

Posted Feb 26, 2009 14:14 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)
In reply to: OT: Which Tom-Tom for pedestrians/bicycle riders? by shane
Parent article: Microsoft sues TomTom

The imagery at least suggests that they intend this range for motorcycles. It really wants an audio link to the helmet so that you can hear instructions, rather than constantly look at the screen (and get yourself killed). Most bicyclists don't wear a full crash helmet, and certainly not one expensive enough to justify adding a headphone connection.

For pedestrians software solutions on a handheld GPS or smartphone are probably more sensible than anything related to TomTom's technology. I don't know about cycling because I haven't done it in anger for years. If you like to support Free/Open things then look at OpenStreetmap.org and see what's available in the way of route-planning for the OSM platform.

TomTom is keyed around a motorist's needs. e.g. TomTom offers hundreds of meters of warning for a turn, an unnecessarily long warning for a pedestrian but just about right for a car or motorcycle; and it can re-plan a route very quickly after you miss a turn. But a pedestrian who misses a turn simply turns around and fixes their error, only motor vehicles on roads where U-turns are forbidden need this feature.

Also (and this a big win for OSM) most commercial devices including TomTom don't care about routes which aren't open to motor vehicles. So if you ride a horse, walk or even in some cases cycle, the TomTom dataset is missing your fastest and best options a lot of the time. A lot of OSM is compiled by hikers and cyclists so it has many of those routes even in built-up areas where they're not well reflected in official maps.


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