The sources
Every entry on Live Roads comes from one of these official sources. Each entry shows which one, when the source last updated it, and links to it.
| Source | Covers | What we take | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Highways | England: motorways and major A roads | Roadworks and planned closures (DATEX II) | Every 3 minutes |
| National Highways motorway signs | England: motorways and major A roads | Accidents, breakdowns, queues and other incidents shown on the signs | Every 3 minutes |
| Traffic Wales | Wales: motorways and trunk roads | Incidents, roadworks and closures | Every 2 minutes |
| Traffic Scotland | Scotland: trunk roads | Incidents, roadworks and closures (DATEX II) | Every minute |
| TrafficwatchNI (Department for Infrastructure) | Northern Ireland | Incidents, roadworks and closures | Every 4 minutes |
| Transport for London | London's streets, including the red routes | Collisions, works and closures | Every 2 minutes |
| Met Office, via MeteoAlarm | The UK, by warning region | Weather warnings that affect driving: wind, snow and ice, rain, fog, thunderstorms | Every 2 minutes |
| Fuel Finder (DESNZ) | Every filling station in the UK | Pump prices by fuel, as each station reports them | Every 5 minutes |
The pages are rebuilt from the latest reading every minute. Nothing comes from drivers' reports, phone locations or estimates, and Live Roads does not predict delays: it shows what the authorities have published.
England's incidents come from the motorway signs
National Highways' open feed carries roadworks and planned closures, but not accidents or breakdowns. Its full incident feed needs a separate agreement, which is in progress. Until then, England's incidents come from the messages on the motorway signs: when a sign says “lanes closed due to vehicle fire” or “queue ahead”, that is an event on that stretch.
- Messages that are not about an event are left out: journey times, “keep your distance”, adverts for closures already in the roadworks feed.
- Several signs showing the same message about the same event become one entry.
- The entry disappears on the next reading after the signs clear.
The signs cover motorways and some major A roads, so an accident on a road without signs nearby will not appear. Pages that depend on it say so.
What the labels mean
- Accident: a collision, as the source describes it. Incident: anything else unplanned, such as a breakdown, an obstruction, an animal or a fire. Roadworks: planned work. Weather: a Met Office warning.
- Full closure means the main carriageway is shut in that direction. A closed slip road, link road or lay-by is labelled as such, and a side street closed at a junction while the main road stays open is a partial closure, not a full one.
- Tonight is 6pm to 7am, and this weekend is Friday 6pm to Monday 7am, UK time. A closure counts if any part of it falls in that window.
- In Northern Ireland, roads that share a number with a road in Great Britain carry “(NI)”: the M1 (NI) runs from Belfast to Dungannon and is a different road from the M1 in England.
When a source fails or goes quiet
- If a source does not answer, the last good reading is kept for up to 15 minutes and marked as such. After that its entries are removed rather than shown as current.
- Each source has a limit on how long it can go without publishing anything new. Past it, the site says the source has stopped publishing instead of showing a zero that would read as “nothing is happening”.
- A road or nation whose source is down shows “no data”, never “no incidents”.
Fuel prices
Prices come from Fuel Finder, the government scheme under which every filling station in the UK must report each price change. They are read every 5 minutes and shown exactly as published, with the time each was last updated. Live Roads never changes a price.
- The cheapest lists count only prices between 20% below and 35% above the national median for that fuel, updated in the last 30 days, at stations that are open. This keeps out typing errors and prices nobody has updated in months.
- Nothing is hidden: a price left out of the cheapest lists is still shown in the full list, with the reason.
- A few stations are published far from their own postcode. When the two are more than 5 km apart, the station is placed at its postcode, and says so.
- Every price table links to Fuel Finder to report a price that is wrong.
Guides
Guides are written against the official source for each fact, which is cited at the end of the guide with the date it was checked. When a source changes, the guide is updated.
Corrections
If something looks wrong, write to [email protected] with the page and what you saw. More about who runs the site is on the about page.