The average motorist in the United Kingdom drove up to 10,000 miles per year. In 2018, ** percent of respondents stated that they drove between one to ***** miles annually, which was an increase compared to the year before. Mileage for private travel was highest when compared to other purposes, according to a governmental survey among British car drivers. In 2017, an average of roughly ***** miles were driven for private reasons.

Company cars have highest mileage

The above mentioned governmental survey also found that those driving company cars tended to travel more than private car users. This was mainly due to the extra distances travelled for business and commuting.

Most UK residents use a car every day

A 2018 Statista survey found that more than half of the UK residential population used a car every day. Only *** percent of respondents reported using a car less often than several times a year, with not *** never using such passenger vehicles.

Cars and vans were the most popular mode of transport for commuting purposes in England. In 2019, car and van drivers travelled an average of 782 miles per person per year, roughly three times the distance travelled by those using surface rail as a means of commuting. In Great Britain overall, the car was used by more than two thirds of commuters, by far the majority of those travelling to work. In the past three years, the popularity of the car was unchallenged.

Train commutes the longest

The average commuting time for those travelling via rail was an hour, which suggested that those using rail tended to do so when needing to traverse greater distances. By comparison, the average car commute was 26 minutes long in 2017.

Company cars have greatest annual mileage

The greatest commuting mileage of car drivers was covered by those driving company vehicles. In 2018, a company car user drove nearly four times the distance someone using a private car travelled.

This statistic represents the distance travelled by driving, either as a driver or as a passenger in England in 2018, by age and gender. Male drivers travelled the longest distance by car or van, especially those aged between 40 and 59. The female public present a similar trend, the females who travelled the longest distances were drivers aged between 40 and 59. In general, male drivers presented a trend of longer travelled distances than female drivers. However, female passengers travelled longer distances than male passengers.

Surface rail is the public transport mode with which people in England cover the largest distances. The average distance covered by rail in a year had been rising in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, peaking at *** miles per person in 2019. While rail travel started to recover in 2021, the average distance covered still stood at *** miles per person in 2022.

This statistic compares mileage for different travel purposes according to the car ownership type in Great Britain in 2017. People driving company cars travelled a lot more than those with private cars, due to the extra distances travelled for business and for commuting.

A dataset of vehicle MPG ratings and fuel cost calculations based on manufacturer, model, and fuel type.

By our definition, any journey that travels slower than the speed limit, experiences delay. To put this into context, if you experience 10 seconds of average delay per mile, then to travel one mile on a motorway will take 61 seconds instead of the 51 seconds it would take driving at 70mph.Our average speed information provided is that observed during the specific year on a specific road link.Our journey time reliability metric describes the amount of non-recurrent, or unexpected, delay on a link. Unexpected delay is the difference between the observed travel time and the typical travel time on this section of road. For example, of the 10 seconds of average delay per mile in the previous example, 5 seconds of this could be unexpected delay and therefore contributes to our reliability performance indicator. The other 5 seconds would be delay that is typically experienced due to regular traffic conditions or the physical features of the road. Our Total Delay metric adds up all the delay experienced on a road link during that year, across all vehicles, so shows the links which experience the most cumulative delay. This could show a highly-trafficked road as experiencing more total delay than a lower trafficked road, even if the average delay per vehicle might be higher on the road with less vehicles. Because some links are longer than others, this metric is normalised based on the size of the link and the number of days of data.

This statistic compares the average distance travelled per person annually for all purposes in England in 2018, by mode of transport. Car drivers covered the greatest distance, at 3,244 miles per person per year.

The Motor Vehicle Parts & Accessories Manufacturing industry remains healthy thanks to the aftermarket as UK car production dwindles. According to the SMMT, UK car manufacturers assembled 779,584 vehicles in 2024, a 13.9% decrease from 2023, with engine production down 7.1% in the same year. Car production between January and August 2025 fell further by 5.9% compared to the same period in 2024, reducing the volume of parts needed at factories. Sharp dips in car production in previous years, coupled with current struggles in the automotive sector, directly affect the volume of parts ordered. Foreign orders present some opportunities, but the competition for imports is fierce, reducing the market share of domestic manufacturers.

Over the five years through 2025-26, industry revenue is forecast to expand at a compound annual rate of 2% to £12 billion, when the average profit margin will be 6% and revenue growth of 2.2% in 2025-26. In 2024-25, revenue expanded thanks to aftermarket orders as car production sank. Higher car usage and the presence of older cars on UK roads lead to strong retail sales, keeping revenue strong for many car parts makers. Operating profit has narrowed amid rising input costs and low prices for vehicle parts and accessories, caused partly by the high degree of import penetration and substantial buying power held by car manufacturing giants like Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan and BMW. The threat of imports has compelled manufacturers to maintain competitive prices.

The car parts market is set to perform well. Exports will rise in the coming years as supply chain disruptions dissipate. Fuel economy improvements, safety enhancements and the increasing sophistication of car technology will support vehicle part and accessory manufacturing, while the aftermarket will sustain essential repair sales. The number of vehicles on UK roads and miles driven will climb over the next decade, supporting demand for crucial parts and industry revenue growth. Component makers must adjust their operations to produce components for electric and hybrid electric vehicles, which will account for a higher share of domestic production as the UK focuses on achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Revenue is anticipated to climb at a compound annual rate of 1.9% to reach £13.2 billion over the five years through 2030-31.

Context

The UK government amassed traffic data from 2000 and 2016, recording over 1.6 million accidents in the process and making this one of the most comprehensive traffic data sets out there. It's a huge picture of a country undergoing change.

Note that all the contained accident data comes from police reports, so this data does not include minor incidents.

Content

ukTrafficAADF.csv tracks how much traffic there was on all major roads in the given time period (2000 through 2016). AADT, the core statistic included in this file, stands for "Average Annual Daily Flow", and is a measure of how activity a road segment based on how many vehicle trips traverse it. The AADT page on Wikipedia is a good reference on the subject.

Accidents data is split across three CSV files: accidents_2005_to_2007.csv, accidents_2009_to_2011.csv, and accidents_2012_to_2014.csv. These three files together constitute 1.6 million traffic accidents. The total time period is 2005 through 2014, but 2008 is missing.

A data dictionary for the raw dataset at large is available from the UK Department of Transport website here. For descriptions of individual columns, see the column metadata.

Acknowledgements

The license for this dataset is the Open Givernment Licence used by all data on data.gov.uk (here). The raw datasets are available from the UK Department of Transport website here.

Inspiration

• How has changing traffic flow impacted accidents?
• Can we predict accident rates over time? What might improve accident rates?
• Plot interactive maps of changing trends, e.g. How has London has changed for cyclists? Busiest roads in the nation?
• Which areas never change and why? Identify infrastructure needs, failings and successes.
• How have Rural and Urban areas differed (see RoadCategory)? How about the differences between England, Scotland, and Wales?
• The UK government also like to look at miles driven. You can do this by multiplying the AADF by the corresponding length of road (link length) and by the number of days in the years. What does this tell you about UK roads?

Traffic count figures from the Department for Transport which give the total volume of traffic on stretches of road in Sheffield for the whole year, and are calculated by multiplying the Annual average daily flow (AADF) by the corresponding length of road and by the number of days in the years.

Traffic figures are presented as: Units = thousand vehicle miles

More metadata details: http://data.dft.gov.uk/gb-traffic-matrix/traffic-majorroads-miles-metadata.pdf

In 2022, the average person in England travelled around ***** miles by car or van as a driver and around ***** miles as a passenger. Distances travelled had fallen in 2020, with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but noticeably rose again in 2022.

Average journey time per mile during the morning peak on major routes in the authority.