ITIS has signed a major deal with the AA to provide the breakdown firm's Roadwatch service with real-time traffic flow information from November.

The AA will also jointly market, manage and develop ITIS' RDS-TMC service, which is already used by Toyota and BMW.

The AA will evaluate opportunities to market NavTrak, ITIS' stolen vehicle tracking system among its 12million members.

ITIS will provide traffic flow data collated by a technique called floating vehicle data (FVD), which uses information from selected vehicles operating across the strategic road network, including Eddie Stobart lorries and National Express coaches.

It provides both real-time flow information which can be used to alert drivers on traffic congestion, and historic information which can be used to predict journey times and select routes.

The AA will also be helping ITIS enhance its FVD network by providing access to data collected from the AA's fleet of 3,600 patrol vehicles, representing about 140 million location messages a year.

Roger Wood, AA managing director, said: 'This is an exciting development that allows us to further develop services for our customers and to improve the efficiency of our own AA patrol fleet.'