TomTom review

I tested TomTom on an Apple iPhone 5 running iOS 6.0.2. The app boots quickly to a main menu that lets you navigate to a destination, modify your route options (if one is already in progress), browse the map, plan multi-segment routes, or change settings. Tap the Navigate To button, and you'll see options for navigating to your home, favourites, recent destinations, specific street addresses, and so on. You can also navigate directly to contact addresses, geotagged photo locations, coordinates, or points on a map as well.

For the most part, keying in street addresses was a smooth process in my tests. Just as with the company's standalone navigation devices, you input the city first, followed by the street name, and then the street number.

Searching for points of interest (POI) is also standard fare. However, TomTom's POI database isn't the greatest, and the category breakdown continues to make little sense. Food stores, hardware stores, electronics stores, and more are all lumped together in one overcrowded category labelled "shop," while there are dozens of top-level categories for things like veterinarians, water sports, tennis courts, and tourist information offices, which is misguided to say the least. Another issue: TomTom has removed its Google local search feature, so it’s not possible to get around the internal POI database anymore as you could in earlier versions of the app.

Once on the road, TomTom's app is easy to use but not particularly attractive, with bland graphics and choppy animation that's more reminiscent of a three-year-old standalone GPS. That said, TomTom still leads the pack when it comes to displaying route information. You get all manner of data across the bottom of the screen, all of which updates in real-time.

The main display shows the current street, the next turn off, how far away it is, your current speed, the speed limit of the current road, and the estimated time remaining, distance remaining, and estimated arrival time. You also get 3D lane assistance views, which help with complex motorway or inner city street layouts, although TomTom's iPhone 5 optimisations missed this screen, as it's blurry and appears with black bars to either side.

One annoyance is that clearing a route still takes three taps on three separate screens, which is at least two too many. Rival Garmin, in contrast, offers a clear "End Trip" button at the bottom right at all times. That makes it easy to end navigation if you're looking for a parking spot near your destination, or decide mid-route that you no longer need guidance. The latter is a common occurrence if you're coming back from a new place and need navigation just to get to a major motorway, at which point you know the rest of the way home.

In a series of route tests, TomTom performed exactly as expected, which is to say very well. The company's IQ Routes feature adapts estimated arrival times and matches them to real-world data collected from drivers. Combined with daily Map Share updates, which you can download right from the phone, TomTom's app is arguably more "plugged in" to current road conditions than the competition.

Voice prompts were clear, crisp, and loud. They were also well timed, and the app pronounced street names correctly in almost all cases. TomTom includes several dozen voices in roughly two dozen languages; most don't say street names, but a few do. You can also purchase celebrity voices for the app via an in-app purchase, with options for the likes of Homer or Mr Burns from the Simpsons, or Darth Vader or Yoda from Star Wars.

The HD traffic plug-in deserves a special mention. It places a bar on the right side of the screen that represents traffic conditions for your route along the way. It's very impressive, and the traffic readouts update very frequently, and always accurately reported what was ahead – even on secondary routes, which was a nice surprise.

In one particular case, it insisted I exit a normally empty motorway earlier than usual. As I thought, "nah, let me ignore it and see what happens," right past the exit, I saw brake lights as everyone ahead came to a stop. I exited just in time. The only downside is that HD traffic is an in-app purchase so you’ll be paying extra for the service.

The November election did not change the balance of power in Washington, but committee leadership in Congress is in flux and trucking lobbyists are alert for what that might mean.

Hill committee assignments are particularly important. During the next couple of years, trucking will have to track implementation of 2012's highway law and prepare for the drafting of the next version, due in 2014.

Infrastructure funding already has come up for discussion during negotiations over the "fiscal cliff," a combination of tax increases and spending cuts designed to be so unpalatable that legislators will be forced to come to terms on long-term debt reduction and tax reforms.

Transportation experts look to the several high-level infrastructure commissions that have called for more highway money, and to the 2010 Simpson-Bowles plan for solving the fiscal crisis, which recommended a 15-cent fuel tax increase. The idea is not dead on arrival, said Peter Ruane, president of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, at a Bipartisan Policy Center forum.

"Politicians should have to have the debate," he said. "The fuel tax is the most efficient, proven form of financing. The only time we've gotten any increase in funding has been as part of a grand agreement on deficit reduction. It should be considered, and it is being considered."

When Carrie storms into her sister Dorrit's room and demands the purse, the brooding 14-year-old denies any knowledge of its whereabouts. While rifling through her younger sister's drawers, Carrie comes across a bag of pot. This leads to accusations of jealousy and spying and ends with hair pulling. As the girls tussle, a voice over informs us that the year is 1984, that Ronald Reagan is president, and that the family matriarch died of cancer three months earlier.

The fight is broken up by the girls' bland looking father Tom. Carrie insists she has nothing to wear, because she didn't have her annual shopping trip with mom. In an effort to comfort his eldest daughter, Tom lets her have access to her mother's closet that has been left in exactly the same condition as it was when she was still alive. In awe, Carrie's eye catches a green sundress, but her father holds too much of a sentimental attachment to it, "Not that dress. She wore it on her last birthday," he says. Instead he hands her a pair of sunglasses which prove useful on the first day of school.

When Carrie arrives at school, we find out she's a junior with three close friends: Mouse, Maggie and fashion-forward Walt, who give her the gift of normalcy while the rest of her classmates whisper and stare as she walks down the hall. The other big news on campus is the arrival of Sebastian. As he appears all heads turn. It is hard to understand why, because he isn't especially appealing.

Turns out he does know Carrie from spending summers at the swim club when he was home from boarding school. That news pales in comparison to the fact that Mouse got herself an older boyfriend and lost her virginity over the summer, or as she puts it, "It was like putting a hot dog in a key hole." Even for a high-school girl, that is uninspired dialogue. In addition, Carrie finds out from Maggie that she too had her V-card punched.

Emboldened by her friends' sexual escapades, Carrie approaches Sebastian. It turns out that swimming isn't the only thing the twosome had done at the local pool. Sebastian and Carrie had shared a steamy kiss. It was also her first kiss, and she hadn't seen him since. While trying to work up the nerve to ask Sebastian out, Carrie spots her father coming down the hall. The only other time he had come to the school was when her mother took a turn for the worse.

Frozen and unable to speak, Carrie elegantly faints into Sebastian's arms, and he lays her gently on the floor. When she regains consciousness, Carrie finds out her father was here to meet with her guidance counselor. They decide that Carrie might benefit from an internship that would take her out of her snug little suburban town and plop her into Manhattan.

The night before starting her new internship, Carrie again confronts Dorrit about their mother's purse. It doesn't take Carrie long to find it and see that it has been ruined; covered in nail polish. Carrie accuses her sister of destroying the beloved bag on purpose, but Dorrit denies the accusation. She tells her sister she just wanted something of their mother's because Carrie got everything, "You got the purse, your 16th birthday, the start of high school; I got nothing." Carrie has one of her famous revelations, "I never thought of myself as the lucky one, but I had precious extra years that Dorrit would never have." The damaged purse offers a glimpse at creative Carrie as she creates her own custom bag.