Customers have been discovering that Garmin Nuvi GPS systems do not always choose the best route — and sometimes don’t even know about major highways.

For a good example, there’s this story from the News & Observer. There is a new section of highway, I-540, that opened in January 2007 and is the best route to use to get to the north part of the county around Raleigh, N.C.

But, although the major artery has been open for virtually an entire calendar year, Garmin’s 2008 map updates, which cost $70 (though cheaper if you know where to look), don’t have the info. If you drive onto I-540, as thousands do, your GPS will admonish you ad nauseum to turn around because the highway doesn’t exist.

This is only one example; there are countless others. It highlights an unfortunate side of the rise of online maps and GPSs and the new culture that seems lost all of a sudden without such handholding technology: many map sources buy info from the same companies, so mistakes and omissions get repeated. If Garmin doesn’t have a road, it’s likely that Yahoo! and Google Maps don’t have it either.

New roads come and old ones change, so it’s reasonable to expect some lag from GPS map systems. But to exclude an entire major highway that has been around for a year is inexcusable. As more and more people come, not to use, but to rely on GPS devices, we can only wonder how often someone will get lost because of their GPS rather than in spite of it.

Have you had a similar experience with a GPS device? Tell us about it in the comments.

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