Currently reading: Two days wasted a year in traffic

Commuters waste more than two days each year stuck in traffic

Commuters waste more than two days every year stuck in traffic, according to a new survey.

Kia Motors’ Cleaner Driving Report looked at the driving habits of Britain’s commuters and found that 49 and a half hours were spent in stand-still traffic each year, which amounts to 91 days of their working life.

Queues and jams affect 71 per cent of British commuters on their way to work, with the average commute taking 47 minutes. The survey found that 12 minutes of each commute was spent below 5mph or totally stationary.

Around 30 per cent of those questioned have resorted to using public transport due to the congestion on Britain’s roads, although 72 per cent said they valued the space and privacy seen by driving to work.

Around two thirds of motorists admitted to speeding when the traffic clears to make up for lost time, while one in three said they had experienced road rage while in traffic.

The survey also found that the A556 in Manchester was the most congested road, with commuters who use the road collectively wasting half a million hours sitting in queues on the four-mile stretch each year.

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theonlydt 2 November 2009

Re: Two days wasted a year in traffic

Pah - you can waste an entire day of your life in about 8 trips on the m25! If our construction industry could actually build/repair/upgrade our infrastructure quickly and on time instead of being amazingly incompetent (amazingly, excluding the 2012 olympic site itself which is ahead of schedule) I reckon we could cut 25% off the national average.

Scoobman 2 November 2009

Re: Two days wasted a year in traffic

Peter Cavellini wrote:
there are now answers to this problem, the cause is life and how it's persued.

There are things you can do to improve traffic flow, particularly at bottlenecks, but ultimately you are right. Congestion is simply a form of rationing.

A6SLinequattro 2 November 2009

Re: Two days wasted a year in traffic

Perhaps there has been an increase in immigration in last 12 years and then no noticeable improvement in transport infrastructure, with the governments' preference of spending very little of the taxes from the motorists on other things. The 'traffic calming measures and the green initiatives' do not help either.