What is the average miles driven per year in the UK?

When you apply for motor insurance, most insurers will ask you how many miles you usually drive in a year. You might find this difficult to estimate, so what’s the average number of miles driven a year in the UK?

In 2015, motorists drove an average of 7,900 miles each, according to the Government’s National Travel Survey. So if you drive an average amount, you’re probably close to this.

But how do you know if you drive more than this or less? We’ll take you through how to work out how many miles you drive a year, and whether the UK average has any bearing on this.

How many miles do you drive?

Let’s break down the average of 7,900 miles a year a bit. That works out at just over 650 miles a month. Does this sound close to what you do, or is it much lower or higher?

If you commute to work using your car and you drive around to other places throughout the month, it’s likely that you’ll be close to this. It doesn’t matter if you’re not sure if it’s exactly accurate – it’s just supposed to be an estimate

But if you have a really long commute or you only use your car a couple of times a week, the average of 7,900 miles per year probably isn’t going to be accurate. Instead, you’ll need to work out how many miles you drive a year. This might seem like a daunting task but you only have to do this once when you apply for insurance.

Work out how many miles you drive every week. So if you drive to work and back from Monday to Friday and it’s three miles one way, this is 30 miles a week. That works out at 1560 miles a year.

You probably don’t only use your car to go to work either – you might use it to drive to the shops or to pick the kids up from school, or even to go on holiday. So you should change the estimate to reflect this – around 2000 miles a year, for example.

Why you’ll need to know

The reason why it’s important to know how many miles you drive a year is because when you apply for insurance, you’ll have to put this down. Insurers want to know this information because they use the number of miles you drive to work out how risky you are. For example, if you drive less than 25 miles a day, they might offer you a cheaper quote.

Make sure the figure you put is as accurate as possible though – don’t try and push the price down by putting in a lower number of miles. If you do and you need to make a claim, your insurer might not cover you if they think the information you gave when you applied was inaccurate.

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