ANYONE who has spent time in a car in Warrington will know traffic delays are a regular occurence.

But now figures released by the Department for Transport (DfT) reveal how many seconds drivers will spend at a standstill for every mile they travel on an A road.

The data for Warrington shows that for every mile on one of the main roads across the area a car will be delayed by 53.6 seconds.

So for a daily commute of five miles a driver should add around four minutes to the journey to get to work on time. Anyone travelling 20 miles can expect a delay of around 18 minutes.

The latest statistics, covering 2016, show there has been a fall of 1% on the previous year.

And Warrington drivers are right if they get furious about traffic jams, as they are delayed more than the majority of England.

The country overall has an average delay time of 45.9 seconds per mile, which was a 2.8% increase on 2015.

While the DfT hasn't yet released localised data for 2017, it has unveiled the England-wide numbers which show the average delay has increased once again to 46.4 seconds.

Queues can be caused by anything from fuel spills, emergency repairs and broken down lorries, to congestion during peak times.

And the figures appear to show that traffic jams, one of Britain's least popular national pastimes, are getting worse.

All of this impacts speeds on A roads, where England's average is 25mph despite speed limits ranging between 30mph to 70mph on anything from small urban roads to dual carriageways.

In 2016 motorists in Warrington chugged along at 22.2mph, slower than Usain Bolt over the 100m.

This was the same average speed as the previous year.

In October the government wrote to Highways England, which runs major A roads and motorways, demanding a reduction in delays after the transport data company Inrix revealed traffic jams on UK roads cost the economy £9bn a year.

By Ralph Blackburn, data reporter