BERLIN, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- A record of around 745,000 traffic jams, more than 2,000 traffic jams per day across Germany on average, were registered in 2018, the general German automobile club (ADAC) announced on Thursday.
Compared with the previous year, the number of traffic jams increased by almost three percent in 2018. According to the automobile club, the total length of all traffic jams grew by about 5 percent and amounted to about 1.5 million kilometers across all of Germany.
Speaking to Xinhua on Thursday, a spokesperson of ADAC said that traffic jams are only recorded if the average speed is less than 20 kilometers per hour for more than five minutes. Adding that an average speed between 20 and 40 kilometers per hour would only be classified as "slow-moving traffic".
In 2018, drivers on German roads spent a total of about 459,000 hours stuck in traffic jams. According to ADAC, the record number of traffic jams was mainly caused by an increase in total automobile mileage of 0.4 percent as well as a higher number of road construction sites
More than a third of all traffic jams in Germany were recorded in Germany's most populous federal state, North Rhine-Westphalia, followed by Bavaria with 17 percent and Baden-Wuerttemberg with 11 percent.
According to ADAC, the worst day with regards to traffic jams in 2018 was June 28 when the start of summer holidays in several German states coincided with heavy commuter traffic.
