A free iPhone application from the UK’s Highways Agency National Traffic Control Centre has been launched to help motorists avoid congestion hotspots and plan their journeys.

The application pinpoints the user’s location, displays planned roadworks and traffic updates and tunes in to the Highways Agency’s radio station to give you up-to-the-minute details of road conditions.

UK Highways Agency director of traffic management Simon Sheldon said the application is the latest in the range of free journey-planning tools offered by the UK.

“It homes in on the user’s location to give the latest traffic news, and provides constant updates about incidents on the network,” Sheldon said.

A desktop ticker and RSS feeds are already available through the Highways Agency website to help drivers avoid any jams.

The National Traffic Control Centre offers traffic information through over 300 websites run by various media organisations and a telephone service along with the radio station.

This is on top of traffic reports on local and national radio and the variable overhead signs on the motorway.

Sheldon-Wilson said: “Last year we also launched a mobile version of the Agency website, which is proving to be one of the most popular ways of accessing our live traffic data.”