heycar research reveals miles *not* driven during lockdown

Online used car marketplace heycar analysed lockdown driving data to examine how it changed our driving habits and found:

Since lockdown started in March, the miles driven per year in the UK have dropped by more than 70%. heycar.co.uk calculated that we have ‘saved’ 43.2 billion miles - that’s 42.2 billion miles not driven in lockdown.

Please find a media bulletin and infographic with full stats below. Please cite the research with a backlink to heycar.co.uk.

*** Lockdown Numbers: The Decline in UK Driving***

Lockdown completely changed how often we drive. Online used car sales platform heycar were curious to find out how much it changed. So they did the research. They crunched the numbers then designed an infographic with their findings.

Here’s what they found:

• Since lockdown started this March, the miles driven per year in the UK have dropped by more than 70%.

• heycar.co.uk has calculated that we have ‘saved’ 43.2 billion miles - that’s 42.2 billion miles not driven in lockdown.

• That’s enough fuel to fill 251.9 million jerrycans, or 2,015 Olympic-sized swimming pools of fuel. 

• With the money saved on fuel, you could buy 6.7 million Tottenham Hotspur season tickets. 

• We could buy approximately 446,000 used cars with just the fuel money alone.

• Not only have we saved on fuel, but we’ve also saved on tyres. We’ve saved approximately 5.5 Mariana Trenches in tyre tread depth. That’s about 36,676 humans of average height standing on one another’s shoulders high.

Please help yourself to the infographic, or you can grab the stats alone. We just ask you to credit us via a backlink to heycar.co.uk. 

Let us know if you have any questions, or any other calculations that could make the findings even more interesting, or relevant to your readers. I’d love to have a chat. 

Contributing data & sources:

Since lockdown started, UK miles driven have dropped by more than 70%. Source: Waze/Motoring Research

In 2018, the average car in the UK drove 7,600 miles. Source: Department for Transport, National Travel Survey 2018

There were 32.5million passenger cars in the UK in 2018. Source: Statista

Statistics calculated using lockdown start of 23 March and calculated the ‘lockdown months’ of reduced driving as lasting 3 months (23 March - 23 June). Full data available on request