How much fuel is wasted when you are stuck in traffic? INRIX, an organisation that specialises in traffic management and the connected car, has worked out that in the UK, almost 70 per cent of us use the car to commute during peak times, representing 124 hours stuck in gridlock each year – the equivalent of 18 days per annum – and it’s only going to get worse. By 2030, that figure will have risen to an average of 136 hours, according to INRIX.

What does that mean in terms of fuel consumption? Volvo Trucks has estimated that stopping and accelerating 10 times in 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) raises the fuel consumption of a heavy truck by 130 per cent. Scale that down for a car and it would not be as heavy a penalty as that, but hopefully you get the point. Stopping and starting burns fuel. A modern car with automatic stop and start would eliminate some of the idling, but in short if you can keep moving, you would be saving fuel.

INRIX has a solution for smartphone users. If you have an Android, Apple, or Windows phone, you can download the free INRIX Traffic App. The Application would add to your data usage, but it is constantly gathering information from points along your route, including from other App users, and calculating the best route to keep you moving. All you have to do once the App is downloaded is to enter your commuting start and end point, and it will do the rest for you, day in day out, guiding you around all of the traffic hold-ups.

As such it is very similar to cars equipped with TMC, the Traffic Message Channel, which gathers data from a range of sources, including other TMC-equipped cars. Where it detects a problem, it can be flagged up to the driver who would be offered an alternative route. Teletrac, formerly known as Trafficmaster, was one of the first to offer such services and the blue camera network on motorways and main roads was established initially for the Trafficmaster service, to monitor traffic speeds.

Local knowledge helps of course. These systems will not know that the same hold-up occurs at the same place and roughly the same time every morning, but does not usually cause a significant delay. They may well be able to learn that in the future, but in such cases, there is often little to be gained by changing your route. But if you are on an unfamiliar road and the system offers an alternative, it could be worth following. We had a similar experience a year or two back when returning from an event in the north of England and our satellite navigation system routed us away from the M6 on a long diversion. We were in telephone contact via Bluetooth with someone else who had been there and got stuck in the tailback of traffic. Although we followed a long diversion, we were able to keep moving, while they were held up for several hours.

John Kendall