How well does text-to-speech of street/town etc names work in English-language satnav systems?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This morning I made a road trip back to my town, guided by a GPS system the German-language voice output of which also gave town steet and names (‘turn right on Heidenheimer Strasse’, ‘continue 20 kilometers to Tübingen’).

Of course, unlike set phrases such as ‘turn right after … meters’, a text-to speech system cannot have all possible street, town names etc. in storage as recordings, but needs to synthesize the pronounciation of these proper names based on the text->pronounciation rules of the language. With German-language proper names this works pretty well as pronounciation is regular (you just need to be sure of how to pare a name into syllables, e.g. Neckarsulm is Nek|ar|sulm not Nek|ars|ulm).

Now, the pronounciation of English-language toponyms and personal names (the latter figuring in street names) is much more irregular. Which makes me curious: How well does English-language text-to-speech typically cope with street names etc.?

2

Mine doesn’t seem terrible. The voice is, obviously, flat - but it seems to get it right most of the time. I’ve not really noticed any glaring errors (although emphasis is often off).

3

Mine definitely works well enough to be useful. While there are some pronunciations that aren’t quite the way a local would say it, like pronouncing a long “e” instead of a short “e”, I’m sure when I’m out of my own territory I don’t even know the pronunciation is wrong because it is going by the same spelling I’m looking for on the sign.

One thing that amused me for a while was its way of saying “Bdg” when there is a big bridge coming up.

4

It works a lot better than the nice English GPS Lady trying to pronounce French street names.