Santa Claus avoids the Traffic Jams, and now you can to!

While they cannot help you fly over the Traffic this Christmas like Santa Claus, mxData and Trafficmaster have come up with a free gift to help avoid the traffic jams when driving home for Christmas. From virtually all colour handsets travellers can now use their mobile phones to check out Live Trafficmaster information and CCTV images of traffic on the road ahead, with FREE access to the TrafficTV service for the whole of December!

Just text Traffic Santa to 84300

"Now people can use their phones to view live traffic and CCTV footage of potential traffic problems on the road ahead," said David James, Managing Director at mxData. "With over 18 million vehicles predicted on the roads over the Christmas weekend trying to get about requires even more planning than usual. Especially on the 21st when Trafficmaster are predicting that a combination of commercial, commuter and leisure traffic could double journey times; we do hope the Traffic TV service will help to ease people's journey home to loved ones safely this Christmas."

Trafficmaster is recommending travellers take these steps to avoid driving into Christmas traffic chaos:

If at all possible make your journey home before December 21st

Start your journey as early as possible; roads will be clearer in the morning

Check traffic reports before you start your journey and if you have the means during your journey using services like TrafficTV to avoid running into heavy traffic

TrafficTV is developed by mxData and spans many of the UK's major cities, roads and motorways. In addition to live traffic information, CCTV footage is sent to the handset from over 600 key roadside traffic cameras up and down the country controlled by a number of bodies including the Highways Agency, Traffic Wales, the Scottish Executive, Reading Borough Council and Tyne Tunnels. The footage is then made available exclusively for the networks' mobile users as TrafficTV. GPRS mobile users can download traffic reports, stills and video clips from TrafficTV.