Driven to distraction: 15 fascinating facts about driving in the UK

More helpful hints and tips for after you have finished your Driving lessons in Newcastle.

Ever get bored behind the wheel?

Here’s a few facts and figures to ponder as you go…

1. The UK driving test only has a 50.2% pass rate.

2. The total road length in Great Britain was estimated to be 245,400 miles in 2012. 

If you could lay all those roads out in a straight line into space, you’d go past the Moon, which is a mere 238,855 miles from Earth.

3. There are around 35,760,901 vehicles currently on UK roads, which is roughly one car for every two people.

4. Putting all these cars, buses, vans, trucks and coaches through an MOT could cost as least £1,961,485,419.85

5. Our favourite car colour is silver. There were 7,996,383 silver cars on the roads in 2012.

6. But the highest concentration of pink cars is in Ipswich.

7. The average used car value is £8,540, according to the website usedcarexpert.co.uk, so the average value of all the cars on UK roads could be around £305,398,094,540 

8. As of the end of July, we bought 1,325,851 new cars this year.

9. If we take the best-selling Ford Fiesta for a back-of-a-fag-packet calculation, this means we’ve collectively spent around £132,578,470,745 on new cars.

10. Even if all those sales were of the UK’s cheapest car, the Dacia Sandero (£5,995), it would still total a massive £7,948,476,745. 

11. Almost one in six UK motorists have been caught speeding in the last five years. (Source:LV=.)

12.  A third of us (31%) would be happy with more toll roads if it meant cheaper car tax.

13. 92% of us consider ourselves good drivers.

14. But 65% of us admit to breaking the 70mph speed limit.

15. The number of petrol stations in the UK is at a 50-year low. There are now around 8,600 stations, down from around 37,000 in 1970.

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