Motorists clock up 42 billion kilometres

Irish-registered cars clocked up almost 26bn miles (42bn kilometres) — and incurred 257,564 penalty points in the process — in 2011.

The Central Statistics Office has released its transport “omnibus” for last year. The document gives an in-depth picture of how people chose to travel around the country and beyond.

The report reveals there were 2,425,156 vehicles on the roads in 2011, 87,000 of them newly registered private cars. In spite of the straitened times, 99 of those new cars were valued at more than €100,000 and two of them cost more than €250,000.