People don’t realise the vast amount of data that needs to be compiled to run these systems, no one provider can do it all, in fact all of them together with millions of man and machine hours and billion plus estimated collective dollars; still only have good coverage for those areas that have the most commercial interest and major inter-regional roads. If you want to see where the breakdown is highest just select remote forested areas such as oregon, or nevada, or wyoming, etc. The data will be 20 years out of date, routing will be marginal, errors high. Just a few observations along that line. What is silly is that people expect that great data is already build and freely available. The market will mature as the in car navigation market takes off and increased profitability and competiveness will drive buying and building better and more complete datasets as well as newer software functions to interact with that information.
waban*