There were around 33.2 million passenger cars in operation in the United Kingdom in 2022. UK roads have become busier since experiencing the most significant decline in the aftermath of the 2008-09 financial crisis. It remains to be seen whether the coronavirus crisis will cause a similar dent in the graph.

Car ownership per household

The majority of car owners in the UK have one car available to them. As of 2018, 53 percent of motorists had one vehicle in their household. Only one percent of respondents owned five cars or more.

Road safety The number of car drivers involved in reported road accidents in Great Britain fell to a record-low of just under 160,000 in 2019. The age group of under 16 year olds witnessed a sharp drop in the number of traffic-related fatalities in 2019. That said, all other age groups reported an increase in fatalities between 2018 and 2019.

The statistics refer to the volume of road traffic in Wales. Road traffic estimates for Wales are compiled by the Department for Transport on behalf of the Welsh Government. These estimates are based on annual roadside manual road traffic counts carried out across Wales during the year. These roadside counts are combined with automatic traffic count (ATC) data and road lengths to produce overall traffic estimates. Traffic estimates for major roads are based on a census of all such roads whereas traffic estimates for minor roads are estimated by calculating growth rates from a fixed sample of count points on the minor road network. Further details of the methodology are available from the DfT at the link below: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/road-traffic-speeds-and-congestion-statistics-guidance . All surfaced roads (excluding Trunk Roads) are included in the estimates. The categories are: Major roads: Motorways. Dual carriageways designed for fast traffic with access limited to motor vehicles, and with relatively few places for joining or leaving. The only motorway in Wales is the M4. A County roads. All other A roads. Estimates for A roads are also available with sub-categories for urban and rural roads on StatsWales. Urban roads are those within the boundaries of settlements with a population of 10,000 or more, and rural roads are all other non-motorway major roads. Minor roads: B roads. Roads intended to connect different areas, and to feed traffic between A roads and smaller roads on the network. Classified unnumbered. Smaller roads intended to connect together unclassified roads with A and B roads, and often linking a housing estate or a village to the rest of the network. Similar to ‘minor roads’ on an Ordnance Survey map and sometimes known unofficially as C roads. Unclassified. Local roads intended for local traffic. The vast majority of roads fall within this category. The analysis by vehicle type is based on roadside observation where vehicles are classified according to their general appearance. The vehicle types identified are: 1) Pedal cycles: Includes all non-motorised cycles, 2) Motorcycles: Two-wheeled motor vehicles, including mopeds, motor scooters and motorcycle combinations, 3) Cars and taxis: Includes estate cars, all light vans with windows to the rear of the driver's seat, passenger vehicles with 9 seats or fewer, three-wheeled cars, motorised-invalid carriages, Land Rovers, Range Rovers and Jeeps. Cars towing caravans or trailers are counted as one vehicle, 4) Buses and coaches: Includes all public service vehicles and works buses other than vehicles with less than 10 seats, 5) Light vans: All goods vehicles up to 3,500kg gross vehicle weight. This includes all car-based vans and those of the next larger carrying-capacity, such as transit vans. Also included are ambulances, pick-ups, milk floats and pedestrian-controlled motor vehicles. Most of this group are delivery vans of one type or another, 6) Goods vehicles: All goods vehicles over 3,500kg gross vehicle weight. Includes tractors (without trailers), road-rollers, box vans and similar large vans. A two-axle motor tractor unit without trailer is also included, 7) All motor vehicles: All vehicles except pedal cycles. Traffic volume is measured using Vehicle Kilometres (VKM), which are calculated by multiplying the annual average daily flow of traffic by the corresponding length of road. For example, 1 vehicle travelling 1 kilometre a day for a year would be 365 VKM over a year. In this release estimates are presented as billion vehicle kilometres (bvk).

This data set is sourced from Dundee City Council's Public Space Camera Surveillance System. It shows a count of road vehicles broken down by vehicle classification type in 8 specified areas across Dundee. The data set shows a snapshot of road vehicles within these areas every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday during the period 1pm-2pm. The vehicle classifications shown on the extract are: * Bus * Car * Motorcycle * Pickup Truck * Truck e.g HGV's etc * Van This data is experimental and subject to further refinement. Please note that due the nature of CCTV cameras at times data may not be collected as specified above. Therefore, caution should be exercised when analysing data and drawing conclusions from this data set.

Dataset population: Households/Car or Vans

Car or van availability

The number of cars or vans that are owned, or available for use, by one or more members of a household. This includes company cars and vans that are available for private use. It does not include motorbikes or scooters, or any cars or vans belonging to visitors.

Households with 10 to 20 cars or vans were counted as having only 1. Responses indicating a number of cars or vans greater than 20 were treated as invalid and a value was imputed.

The count of cars or vans in an area relates only to households. Cars or vans used by residents of communal establishments were not counted.

Daily data showing weekday adjusted busyness indices using traffic camera data to monitor flows of cars, pedestrians, cyclists, buses and commercial vehicles for selected cities and regions of the UK. These are official statistics in development. Source: Transport for London, Transport for Greater Manchester

Black cars were the most popular used passenger vehicle in the United Kingdom in 2021, with over 1.6 million transactions recorded. This amounted to around 21.6 percent of the total used car sales in the country that year.

The statistics refer to the volume of road traffic in Wales. Road traffic estimates for Wales are compiled by the Department for Transport on behalf of the Welsh Government. These estimates are based on annual roadside manual road traffic counts carried out across Wales during the year. These roadside counts are combined with automatic traffic count (ATC) data and road lengths to produce overall traffic estimates. Traffic estimates for major roads are based on a census of all such roads whereas traffic estimates for minor roads are estimated by calculating growth rates from a fixed sample of count points on the minor road network. Further details of the methodology are available from the DfT at the link below: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/road-traffic-speeds-and-congestion-statistics-guidance . All surfaced roads are included in the estimates. The categories are: Major roads: Motorways. Dual carriageways designed for fast traffic with access limited to motor vehicles, and with relatively few places for joining or leaving. The only motorway in Wales is the M4. A Trunk roads. Part of the strategic road network owned by and operated on behalf of Government A County roads. All other A roads. Estimates for A roads are also available with sub-categories for urban and rural roads on StatsWales. Urban roads are those within the boundaries of settlements with a population of 10,000 or more, and rural roads are all other non-motorway major roads. Minor roads: B roads. Roads intended to connect different areas, and to feed traffic between A roads and smaller roads on the network. Classified unnumbered. Smaller roads intended to connect together unclassified roads with A and B roads, and often linking a housing estate or a village to the rest of the network. Similar to ‘minor roads’ on an Ordnance Survey map and sometimes known unofficially as C roads. Unclassified. Local roads intended for local traffic. The vast majority of roads fall within this category. Traffic volume is measured using Vehicle Kilometres (VKM), which are calculated by multiplying the annual average daily flow of traffic by the corresponding length of road. For example, 1 vehicle travelling 1 kilometre a day for a year would be 365 VKM over a year. In this release estimates are presented as billion vehicle kilometres (bvk).

Data on road traffic by road and vehicle type, produced by Department for Transport.

Dataset population: Households

Accommodation type

The type of accommodation used or available for use by an individual household. Examples include the whole of a terraced house, or a flat in a purpose-built block of flats.

Car or van availability

The number of cars or vans that are owned, or available for use, by one or more members of a household. This includes company cars and vans that are available for private use. It does not include motorbikes or scooters, or any cars or vans belonging to visitors.

Households with 10 to 20 cars or vans were counted as having only 1. Responses indicating a number of cars or vans greater than 20 were treated as invalid and a value was imputed.

The count of cars or vans in an area relates only to households. Cars or vans used by residents of communal establishments were not counted.

This statistic illustrates the number of passenger cars registered in the United Kingdom (UK) from 1990 to 2017, in thousand vehicles. In the period of consideration, UK's stock of passenger cars presented a trend of continuous growth. In 2017, 32. 2 million passenger cars were registered in the UK. This value represents an increase of 55.4 percent in comparison with 1990.

15 smart sensors were installed on Mill Road and surrounding streets to record numbers of pedestrians, bicycles, cars and other vehicles. The data being collated and analysed by the Smart Cambridge programme will help the Greater Cambridge Partnership understand how people use the road network.

Data will be released monthly for these locations until the end of 2020. Please note that due to the level of insight that can be gained from these sensors, additional sensors in more locations have been installed in Cambridge since the summer of 2019. Some sensors will remain beyond 2020 in strategic locations and the network is expected to grow. Data for those more permanent sites, outside of the Mill Road project will be published here: https://data.cambridgeshireinsight.org.uk/dataset/cambridge-city-smart-s...

Mill Road Bridge was closed for eight weeks from 1 July 2019 for crucial work being carried out to improve rail services. Pedestrians and cyclists will still be able to cross the railway for most of the working time.

A high concentration of sensors were installed for approximately 18 months to gather data before the closure, during the time when there is no vehicle traffic coming over Mill Road Bridge and then after the bridge is re-opened. This has allowed engineers to see the impact of the closure on surrounding roads, including on air quality. Keeping the sensors in place for this long has also allowed teams to make greater comparisons, by taking in to account daily, weekly, monthly and annual variations in traffic levels.

The below data release offers counts for each sensor over 1 hour periods. The curent data covers the period 03/06/2019 to 13/12/2020.

Hourly counts are broken down by inbound and outbound journeys. .

Counts are also broken down by vehicle type. This includes:

Pedestrians Cyclists Buses LGV OGV 1 OGV 2 The release also includes a full list of sensor sites with geographic point location data.

Dataset population: Households

Car or van availability

The number of cars or vans that are owned, or available for use, by one or more members of a household. This includes company cars and vans that are available for private use. It does not include motorbikes or scooters, or any cars or vans belonging to visitors.

Households with 10 to 20 cars or vans were counted as having only 1. Responses indicating a number of cars or vans greater than 20 were treated as invalid and a value was imputed.

The count of cars or vans in an area relates only to households. Cars or vans used by residents of communal establishments were not counted.

Household composition

Household composition classifies households according to the relationships between the household members. Households consisting of one family and no other usual residents are classified according to the type of family (married, same-sex civil partnership or cohabiting couple family, or lone parent family) and the number of dependent children. Other households are classified by the number of people, the number of dependent children, or whether the household consists only of students or only of people aged 65 and over.

In Northern Ireland only:

• A dependent child is a person in a household aged 0 to 15 (whether or not in a family) or a person aged 16 to 18 who is a full-time student in a family with parent(s).
• A family consists of a couple (married, same-sex civil partnership or cohabiting) with or without children, or a lone parent and their children. It also includes a married, same-sex civil partnership or cohabiting couple with their grandchildren or a lone grandparent with his or her grandchildren, if there is no parent in the intervening generation in the household. A family will also include step-children when their parent is part of the couple.

This dataset is hourly data from the Automatic Traffic Counters across Cambridgeshire from January 2019 to September 2020. The data combines vehicles/cycles going in both directions unless otherwise stated. For information about whether the counter is a vehicle or cycle counter, please see the top of each spreadsheet.

For full details of the physical location of these counters, please click here.

Please note that due to the unreliability of the counters as a legacy system, not all counters are included in this dataset. Some counters are also missing data in places where the counter was not functioning.

The next 6 months of hourly data will be released in early 2021.

Dataset population: Usual residents aged 16 and over in households

Car or van availability

The number of cars or vans that are owned, or available for use, by one or more members of a household. This includes company cars and vans that are available for private use. It does not include motorbikes or scooters, or any cars or vans belonging to visitors.

Households with 10 to 20 cars or vans were counted as having only 1. Responses indicating a number of cars or vans greater than 20 were treated as invalid and a value was imputed.

The count of cars or vans in an area relates only to households. Cars or vans used by residents of communal establishments were not counted.

Economic status

An indicator of a person's status or availability for employment - whether employed, unemployed, or their status (if not employed and not seeking employment).

Census Key Statistics Table KS17: Cars or Vans.

Includes any company car or van if available for private use.
'All cars or vans in the area' includes only those cars and vans owned by; or available for use by; households

This count is not exact as households with more than 10 or vans are counted as having 10 cars or vans.

Cells in this table have been randomly adjusted to avoid the release of confidential data. All data is © Crown Copyright 2003. Census day was 29 April 2001.

1st July 2016 Update

WebTRIS Phase 1 is now available and can be accessed at http://webtris.highwaysengland.co.uk

We are in the process of updating the way that traffic flow data is made available to our external users to replace the old TRADS website. The new platform will deliver a more modern experience, utilising Google Maps with count site overlays and bespoke downloadable reporting capabilities. This new service will be referred to as ‘WebTRIS’.

The new development will contain all of the elements users are already familiar with; searching on Site ID’s and reviewing reports based on Site ID’s etc. but will also modernise the look and feel of the product and allow users to select an area of interest by clicking on a map.

Development began in early February 2016 and is expected to be complete in July 2016.

This is a Phase 1 release. A Phase 2 development is planned to take into account user feedback.

On-going updates will be released here with videos showing the product as it grows. There will also be live demonstrations as the product nears go-live and opportunities to take part in User Acceptance Testing and feedback sessions.

We are working hard to improve the level of service that we provide and thank you for your patience while we do so. We will keep you informed on progress with the next update due in May.

This data series provides average journey time, speed and traffic flow information for 15-minute periods since April 2015 on all motorways and 'A' roads managed by Highways England, known as the Strategic Road Network, in England.

Journey times and speeds are estimated using a combination of sources, including Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras, in-vehicle Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and inductive loops built into the road surface.

Please note that journey times are derived from real vehicle observations and imputed using adjacent time periods or the same time period on different days. Further information is available in 'Field Descriptions' at the bottom of this page.

This data replaces the data previously made available via the Hatris and Trads websites.

Please note that Traffic Flow and Journey Time data prior to April 2015 is still available on the HA Traffic Information (HATRIS) website which can be found at https://www.hatris.co.uk/

In 2023, some 455,300 new electric cars were registered in the United Kingdom. This was a year-over-year increase of 23.8 percent compared to 2022 and over double the sales recorded in 2020. Overall, electric vehicle sales have steadily grown since 2015. A growing electric vehicle market and fleet Electric vehicles have been gaining market share in the United Kingdom. Since 2021, battery-electric vehicles overtook diesel vehicles and have been the second most popular fuel type in the country through 2022. The South East was the region of England with the largest electric car market, at around 80,600 new registrations in 2022, followed by the North West and South West. This increase in sales translates to a sharp rise in the UK electric vehicle fleet, which surpassed one million units in 2022. Most of the vehicles in the electric car parc were battery-electric. Charging infrastructure and its challenges While the UK electric car fleet is steadily growing, the public charging infrastructure has also been on the rise. By July 2023, there were over 44,000 publicly available charging points in the United Kingdom. However, most of these chargers were alternating current chargers, which were typically slower than their direct current counterparts. Accessibility is also one of the leading hurdles for the UK charging network. Most public charging points were destination charging, typically located at the end of a driver's journey in areas such as retail car parks or education areas, and were not open around the clock, which presents challenges in how electric vehicle owners can recharge their vehicles without turning to private home charging.