DRIVERS covered enough mileage on Essex roads to take them around the world hundreds of thousands of times, figures show.

Newly released Department for Transport data shows cars, taxis, lorries and other road vehicles covered 9.6 billion miles on Essex roads in 2018, equivalent to about 385,000 trips around the equator.

This was up 11 per cent from nine years earlier – a faster rise in traffic than the national average.

Across Britain, the number of vehicles on the roads is more than 10 times higher than in 1949. They covered more than 300 billion miles in the last year alone.

Cars and taxis drove much of this increase, and account for four-fifths of road traffic today.

Rachel White, of sustainable transport charity Sustrans, said an over-reliance on cars is "damaging our health and our environment", with current transport policies not doing enough to promote sustainable modes of transport.

The data shows that an average stretch of road in Essex sees 5,118 vehicles pass through it each day.

According to the DfT, road vehicles make up a quarter of the UK's carbon dioxide emissions, though improved fuel efficiency and growing sales of low-emission vehicles have seen CO2 pollution fall slightly since 2000, despite road miles rising.