traffic

With major questions still unresolved about sudden acceleration incidents in Toyotas and other vehicles, Washington is turning to NASA engineers and the broader scientific community to examine everything from mechanical defects and human error to electronic controls and electromagnetic interference.

On Tuesday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced the start of two major investigations designed to look deeper into potential causes of unintended vehicle acceleration, which have been tied to a number of accidents, including some fatal ones. The issue has blown up into a major problem for the auto industry and for Toyota especially, leading to a massive … Read more

TomTom makes good on its pledge to offer lifetime map and traffic updates on select models with its announcement today that the services are now available in North America. More specifically, TomTom has announced the availability of new versions of models in its XL and XXL series that will come bundled with the Lifetime Traffic service, Lifetime Map Update service, or both.

Units with the Maps service will be eligible to download quarterly updates to their TeleAtlas map data and POI databases at no additional cost, ensuring that users have the most accurate info about where they're going and … Read more

A 2010 model update gives Acura's MDX only minor styling changes but serious new tech. We enjoyed the upscale cabin on this crossover SUV, along with adaptive cruise control for effortless freeway driving. Voice command for iPod playback is a new and welcome feature, and the ELS audio system delivers on the sound.

Our biggest surprise was the new suspension technology. In Sport mode and coupled with the smart all-wheel drive, the MDX cornered like a sports car.

Read our review of the 2010 Acura MDX.

Motorola took a pretty serious beating last year when we reviewed its MotoNav TN30, a portable navigation device that received an embarrassingly low 2-star rating. However, instead of dropping out of the PND market or simply releasing an incremental update with fixes, Motorola went back to the drawing board and came back swinging with the all new MotoNav TN700 series.

Here's the surprising part. The first model in this series, the MotoNav TN765t, is a surprisingly good GPS. This device features an ultrawide form factor, a plethora of physical controls, and a well-balanced feature mix with a few innovative … Read more

iPhones can be great driving companions--unless you routinely tweet, text, or otherwise fiddle with the device while behind the wheel. That's a surefire way to get yourself--and possibly others--killed.

Aha Radio for iPhone helps you keep your eyes on the road. The app provides a dashboard-friendly, oversize interface for everything from podcasts and local traffic to Facebook and iPod playlists.

That interface consists of four giant icons per page, the idea being to make them more at-a-glance accessible to drivers. You can customize the arrangement of these icons to your liking and choose exactly what content Aha Radio should … Read more

TomTom's latest version 1.3 update to its navigation app for iPhone went live this week, adding a handful of new features that we were expecting, and a few that we didn't.

We'd heard previously that the 1.3 update would bring integrated Google Local search and TomTom Traffic. However, rather than rolling the traffic service into the update, TomTom gives users access to the service as an in-app subscription. For U.S. users, this means shelling out $19.99 per year to gain access to live flow and incident data for more accurate routing and arrival … Read more

Microsoft's Fiddler2 is a Web Debugging Proxy utility that lets you "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing HTTP data. It logs all HTTP traffic between your PC and the Internet. You can use it to inspect two-way HTTP activity, set breakpoints, and more.

Fiddler2 is one of Microsoft's nifty Power Toys, a class of plain but useful system tools and other small utilities that greatly expand users' control over the Windows environment as well as their PC's software and hardware. Fiddler2's interface is typical of the type, businesslike and efficient but lacking the stylish elements … Read more

GPS device manufacturer TomTom continues to put its weight behind its TomTom app for iPhone with a new version 1.3 update. This revision, which has just been submitted to Apple for review, will add real-time traffic speed and incident reports for more accurate routing and travel time estimates.

Also included in this update is Local Search powered by Google, for finding points of interest that are not included in the preloaded database without leaving the app. TomTom tells us that there will be other yet unnamed enhancements that will be detailed when the app emerges from this end of … Read more

Audi follows in parent company Volkswagen's footsteps by bringing a car to the U.S. with a TDI diesel engine. Using the same turbocharged 2-liter diesel engine as the VW Jetta, the A3 TDI offers the same stellar fuel economy as its lesser German cousin, and it has better cabin tech, including a good iPod connection and Bluetooth phone system. However, Audi lets the A3 TDI simmer with an older version of its navigation system that's not quite on par with its latest technology.

Read our review of the 2010 Audi A3 2.0 TDI.