About the Big Car Count
This app is part of the Connecting Administrative vehicle data for Research on Sustainable Transport (CARS) research project.
The project aims to understand how vehicles are used in the UK and provide better evidence to address a range of issues such as air pollution, congestion, climate change and more. While we know much about vehicles in the UK a crucial missing piece of information is where they "live".
This app is intended to help build a crowd-sourced survey of the home locations of vehicles across the UK. Knowing a vehicle's home location enables a wide range of research for the public good.
Consent to participate in the survey
By submitting responses to the survey you are consenting to participate in the survey. See the consent form for more information.
How to use this app
You will need to give the app permission to access your location. If the app does not know your location you will see a “please share your location” button at the bottom of the survey.
Type in the number plate of any parked vehicles you see and click the button that best describes where it is parked (e.g. Drive, Road, Pavement). If your observation has been successfully summited, a green tick will flash up on the right side of the yellow number plate box.
App Icons
These icons will appear in the yellow number plate box.
What are we looking for
We are looking for cars, vans, and motorbikes parked in their "home" locations, the place they go to at night.
You can contribute in any place or time across the UK. But please consider how likely it is that each vehicle is at home. For example a weekend afternoon on residential street would be a good time to spot vehicles in their home locations. While lunchtime in a mulit-storey car park would be a bad place and time to spot vehicles in their home location.
What are we not looking for
Moving vehicles or vehicles that have temporally stopped (e.g. at traffic lights)
Vehicles parked in temporary locations, e.g. supermarket car park, office car park, outside a school at pickup time.
Service vehicles e.g. police cars, ambulances, busses, coaches, lorries, diggers, taxis
Rules and advice for using this app
Stay Safe
Be careful when crossing the road and be aware of your surroundings to avoid trips. Wear appropriate clothing for the weather and stay in places that you know are safe. If you are a going somewhere unfamiliar bring a friend or tell someone where you are going and when you will return.
Respect others
Don't trespass on private property. We are only interested in vehicles visible from the public street.
If somebody asks you not to survey their vehicle or street respect their wishes and leave the area.
How do you use the data collected.
We will match the number plates you provide to publically available data about the vehicle (e.g. make, model, engine size, emissions, age). We do NOT match the vehicle to any personal information about the owner or driver. We do NOT gather any personal information on the participants of the survey.
We use the GPS location of your phone at the time the number plate is observed to identify which neighbourhood the vehicle is parked in. We can then use the data to produce aggregated statistics such as the average vehicle age or mileage in different neighbourhoods.
Knowing how the types of vehicles and parking vary across the country allows researchers to answer many questions about transport. For example what is the relationship between public transport and car use? What kinds of places are adopting electric vehicles? Or where is pavement parking causing the most problems for pedestrians.
Data will be securely stored at the University of Leeds and only anonymised data will be published via the UK Data Service.
Attribution
Icons used in the site