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Business and commercial drivers have important role to play in TomTom's mission to reduce Britain's traffic congestion by 5%

London – 27. October, 2010
The Managing Director of TomTom Business Solutions, Thomas Schmidt, today affirmed the role business and commercial drivers will play in the company's ambitious Traffic Manifesto plan to reduce congestion across the UK.

“Congestion costs the UK economy £8bn each year: we think it's time to cut that appalling waste right now with a working solution on a very large scale” said Schmidt. “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”

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%.

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.

It's the use of this information that lies at the heart of TomTom's 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.

TomTom is effectively acting as a catalyst for the more efficient use of the existing road network by using data collated by its ever expanding community of drivers. 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.

“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”