One motorway, two completely different roads

Between J16 and J17, 19% of the traffic is a lorry — roughly one vehicle in 5. Between J6 and J6A it is 3%, or about one in 29. Same motorway, same day, and a completely different road to drive.

It matters more than it sounds. A stretch where nearly a fifth of the traffic is heavy goods behaves differently in the wet, takes longer to clear after an incident, and fills its inside two lanes in a way a commuter stretch never does.

Where the lorries are: the freight M1

Stretch	Lorry share	Lorries a day	All vehicles
J16 to J17	18.5%	22,231	120,092
J17 to J18	18.4%	19,518	106,351
J18 to J19†	17.5%	19,440	110,877
J15A to J16	16.8%	20,315	121,280
J15 to J15A	16.4%	20,301	123,822
J20 to J21	15.9%	14,372	90,647
J28 to J29	15.5%	21,096	136,489
J30 to J31†	15.4%	18,862	122,208
J14 to J15†	15.4%	17,495	113,762
J23A to J24	14.6%	19,133	131,396

Where they are not: the commuter M1

Stretch	Lorry share	Lorries a day	All vehicles
J6 to J6A	3.4%	2,568	75,008
J5 to J6	4.1%	4,230	103,178
J2 to J4	5.2%	3,464	66,698
J42 to J43	8.1%	12,997	159,683
J45 to J46	8.2%	9,009	110,133
J34 to J35	8.5%	11,622	136,926
J41 to J42	8.5%	12,984	152,398
J40 to J41†	8.8%	12,582	142,615

Source: Department for Transport road traffic statistics, annual average daily flow for 2025. Figures are vehicles per day, averaged across the year, counted at the points the Department measures. Stretches marked † combine two adjacent count points that report the same measurement either side of a local-authority boundary; the distance is the sum of the two. Ten fragments could not be matched to a partner and are left out rather than guessed at.

How busy is each stretch of the M1? →  ·  All M1 traffic statistics