Fastest Route never makes any Sense

[GarminUserNJ]

I've been using Garmin GPS for a few years. Currently 50LMT and 51 LMT DriveAssist.
The issue is with the fastest route. The GPS ALWAYS picks routes that go on major highways and toll roads even if this route may be up to 30 minutes longer than the common sense route or the Google maps route.

Here's how it goes:
1. Pick a destination on the GPS. It picks a toll road on the OTHER side of the state. Let's say it's a 2 hr trip according to the GPS.
2. I realize this is insane and start driving a more straightforward route. The GPS continues to try and make me turn around.
3. At some point the GPS then, after zillions of recalculations, agrees with my route. So the 2 hr trip now says 1:45 duration or 1:30 or whatever less time than the original calculated route.
4. This type of route calculation got worse 2x when updating firmware (and possibly maps).

Now this is sooo bad on every single trip(various) I take that the GPS is practically useless.
I have my own theories but would like to hear from others on their experience and/or solutions.

 

[Nuvi-Nebie]

You may be able to examine what is happening more easily by planning the route in Garmin Basecamp, but make sure that Basecamp and the Satnavs are all using exactly the same map or you may get different results. Basecamp has the same shortest, quickest etc. options as your satnavs and Basecamp on your computer can re-calculate and show alternative Routes much more efficiently

 

[GarminUserNJ]

I installed basecamp and connected my gps to the computer so basecamp could access the map. This is interesting.
I chose 2 trips I make frequently where the gps chooses routes that make no sense(to me).
Trip #1 - The gps always sends me east across the state to a toll road and then back west - basecamp chose the better route - like google maps. And like the way the gps used to work.
Trip #2 chose the wrong route. Adding 20 miles to the trip and in real life adding up to 30 minutes to the trip. But what was interesting was that when I modified the route to what google maps would do, the time was 2 minutes longer than the previous route. So it did choose the shortest time according the routes it calculated.

Still the problem persists. The main issue is that the gps used to choose the correct common sense routes but now does not. This problem happened after an update and then got worse after another update to the gps. And I have 4 of these gps all operated and setup by different drivers and yet they all choose the wrong routes. I would update the gps's one at a time and see how the routes changed on the updated gps but not on the non-updated gps. Once the update was applied the gps would choose the wrong routes.
The reason why I use the gps for these trips is so the gps can use traffic data to route me around traffic problems. So now I use a website called sigalert.com(or google maps) to see traffic status before I leave on a trip and then just drive like I have no gps. Since the gps picks the wrong routes, the traffic info it uses is of no use to me.
Thanks for the basecamp tip. I did plan a route on basecamp and send it to the gps. I'll see how that works out.

 

[Nuvi-Nebie]

I would suggest a Master Reset on your Satnavs, see link and warnings Click HERE