Slight drop recorded in motor traffic

Date: 5/8/2011

There was a marginal decline in the total amount of road traffic recorded in the UK in the second quarter of 2011.

According to the Department for Transport, overall vehicle numbers were one per cent lower during this period than they were in the second quarter of 2010.

However, traffic on the UK's motorways was found to have experienced broadly no change, although on rural A roads it dropped by two per cent and on urban A routes it slipped by one per cent.

The Department notes that motor traffic had been steadily declining over the course of the last three years, dropping 1.6 per cent between 2009 and 2010.

Before 2008, it had not fallen consecutively for more than 12 months since 1949, when records began.

A second report out this week revealed that there was a ten per cent drop in the number of people killed on the UK's roads during the year ending March 2011 compared to the previous 12-month period.

Posted by Mary Treen