Thomas Schmidt, managing director of TomTom Business Solutions, said: 'Congestion costs the UK economy £8 billion each year: we think it’s time to cut that appalling waste right now with a working solution on a very large scale. High-volume road users, especially business and commercial drivers, will have a significant role to play in achieving our plan to better use the existing road network as laid out in the TomTom Traffic Manifesto.'

The Manifesto outlines how a significant number of drivers using live traffic congestion information to avoid jams will benefit the majority of road users, even if they are not actually using a device. As informed users are diverted away from congestion by their HD Traffic-enabled sat navs, the traffic on the road network is dispersed more effectively. As a consequence, journey times are cut for all vehicles, and less fuel is wasted sitting in jams.

In fact, according to the firm, individual drivers using TomTom’s HD Traffic service can currently reduce their average journey time by up to 15% when there is traffic on their route. According to the company’s estimates, the collective effect of 10% of drivers using such a service would reduce average journey times for everyone else by up to 5%.

All TomTom LIVE sat nav devices are equipped with a SIM allowing the vehicle’s position and speed to be anonymously fed back to TomTom’s HD Traffic Centre. This gives accurate and regularly updated information on traffic flow across the entire road network. The data is then collated, analysed and utilised for route planning.

Currently, TomTom has a quarter of a million high-volume road users in the UK contributing to this information pool – business and commercial drivers, in particular. As business vehicles are out on the road more than any other sector of motorist, the regular and dependable data they collate is essential to TomTom’s HD Traffic service. 

'We know that traffic congestion is not going to disappear completely, but we can do something significant to reduce it today,' said TomTom founder and CEO, Harold Goddijn. 'We’re embarking on this mission because we love driving and hate traffic. We know that millions of drivers around the world feel the same way. We believe that TomTom has a role to play in helping to reduce traffic congestion in countries across the world, working in partnership with governments, institutions, businesses and individuals.'

More details on the Traffic Manifesto can be found on www.tomtom.com/trafficmanifesto