Nav Avoids Freeways

Have you checked through all possible rules or 'avoidances' or preferences? A freeway avoidance sure sounds like the only reasonable explanation.

On some routes, a selection of shortest distance, instead of fastest time, may do this. But this shouldn't happen on every route.

 

As a default the "Preferences" seem to be (at first use) not to include freeways. This frustrated me for days if odd routing (calling my boss saying I had no idea where I was but the car was taking me to work and I will be delayed). To change this, you go to Edit Route, and you see the option Preferences, click on the screen button that says Freeways, click Okay, and then you will be able to go to freeways.

There is a flip side. If you get off a freeway for some street navigating the GPS will guide you back to the freeway unless you retoggle it back off in Preferences.

 

I can't speak for the Prius C navigation system but I've learned to set my Magellan GPS to "fastest time", because with it set to "shortest distance" it had the annoying habit of occasionally directing me to take a freeway exit only to immediately tell me to get right back onto the freeway again.

 

Oh yes. I made that mistake once with the C's built in Nav unit. After putting in the destination, it calculates the fastest, shortest and "environmental" (whatever that means) routes and asks you to choose. I had no idea how to get where I was going and needed to get there in a hurry so I chose "shortest". Big mistake. Took me through neighborhoods, back streets, dead ends. Very frustrating. Will never do that again. "fastest route" will give you the best mix of highways and side streets to get you there quickly. Probably much like your Magellan.

 

The thing is, sometimes when I'm not in a hurry I like driving the side streets, and you usually get better gas mileage by sticking to the slower roads. But if you forget to switch it back again then it can be a pain...

 

Of course. If a diversion will save 20 feet of driving distance, the 'shortest distance' will select it, regardless of how many extra minutes it takes. On longer routes, I have often seen 'shortest distance' find slow mountain / dirt / gravel /scenic roads with slow travel speeds, saving a mile or so at the cost of 3 or more extra travel hours than the freeway route.

For some long travel planning, I will check many different route finders: Prius Nav, Garmin, Google, MS Street & Trips, and Waze. Several give multiple choices, and sometimes different tools give completely different sets of choices.