Worst UK motorways for traffic revealed
Tue, 23 Sept 2025
The UK’s worst motorways for traffic have been ranked – and it’s the M25 that has emerged as the most headache-inducing, with three sections heading the list of Britain’s worst motorway stretches.
The M25 around Buckinghamshire is the most troublesome stretch of all, found car insurance site iSelect. Its parameters included the average daily number of vehicles, the number of lanes, online negative sentiment and mentions of traffic on social media.
Although it didn’t quite have the highest daily number of vehicles, ‘only’ having four lanes of M25 motorway in the Buckinghamshire area edged it to the top of the list.
The second-placed M25 stretch in Hillingdon actually had a higher number of daily vehicles, averaging over 210,000 – but it had six lanes to handle it. Third was the M25 in Surrey, which has five lanes.
Overall, negative sentiment was easily higher for the M25 than for any other motorway in Britain.
Outside of Greater London, the M60 in Salford was next on the list, with 192,000 vehicles a day generating plenty of complaints. It didn’t get so many social media traffic mentions, though – unlike the fifth- and sixth-placed M6 in Warrington and Walsall respectively.
The M1 in Hertfordshire generated even more mentions of traffic on social media – almost as many as the M25 – and the section was pounded by almost 180,000 vehicles daily. Despite all this, negative sentiment was surprisingly low at 7%.
The M25 and M6 both had three mentions in the top 10 worst motorway stretches. And, apart from the M60 and M1, no other motorway featured.
Latest figures show more than 70 billion miles were covered on British motorways in 2024. The average driver lost 62 hours to traffic congestion.
Mobility insights firm Inrix has calculated time wasted in traffic is set to cost drivers in London alone a whopping £42 billion over the next decade.
