Richard Yarrow's opinion for startrescue.co.uk, providing low cost Van Breakdown cover

If you're heading to the continent in the car this summer there are two things you need to know. One, that you’ve got suitable European breakdown cover, and two, once you get there, statistically at least, the roads will be quieter than they are in the UK. The reality, however, depends on where you go.

New figures from sat-nav provider TomTom have revealed Britain's roads really are the most congested in Europe. Sixteen of our cities feature in a list of the 50 most gridlocked places for drivers across the continent. Eight are in the top 20.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, London has the worst congestion in Britain with around 35 per cent of the capital’s roads regularly suffering jams. Yet it’s only third overall in the annual table, behind Brussels in first place and Warsaw in second. London’s traffic flow has decreased by 0.2 per cent in the last year against an increase of 1.2 per cent in Brussels.

So where are the jam hotspots in the UK? Edinburgh and Manchester figure in the top 10 across the continent, and Bradford, Belfast, Oxford and Birmingham occupy four of the five positions just outside it. The biggest year-on-year improvement has been in Dublin, with a 9.7 per cent decrease in the last year.

TomTom uses data from cars which carry its sat-nav systems to compile the report, which makes it about as ‘real world’ as you can get. Here’s the thing – I think most drivers know that driving in cities is going to be a pain in the backside, and out of choice wouldn’t do it. But the issue is they don’t have a choice. They have to get to work, get the kids to school, get to the supermarket. It’s so much the norm now to be stuck in traffic that we’ve just learned to accept it. And that’s quite depressing.