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With almost 30,000 registered carsharers across Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Bristol the region narrowly beats the South East which has just over 28,000 registered carsharers.

The research takes into account the size of the population in each region and despite having the 5th smallest population of the 12 UK regions it has the highest percentage of carsharers with 0.6% of people registering to carshare.

liftshare believe the success is due to the commitment by the local authorities in this region and the work they have done in encouraging and enabling local people to sign up. Websites such as www.carsharedevon.com, www.2carshare.com and www.carsharecornwall.com (which all feed into the national liftshare network) have been around for several years now and have made a huge impact in raising awareness of the benefits of carsharing, enabling people to save themselves time and money whilst doing their bit for the environment, reducing congestion and increasing employment opportunities, not only for members of the public but also local employers.

The top three regions of the UK were, South West, South East and Yorkshire and Humber.

Every day there are 10 million empty seats on UK roads. Travel surveys show that typically 50% of commuters would share if they could find someone suitable to share with. If this we put into practice for every 10 commuting cars on the road 5 would have 2 people in them and the average occupancy would jump 25% to 1.5. A 25% increase in car occupancy would result in a reduction of approximately 21% of the number of commuting cars on the road.

The liftshare network makes it easier for people to find other people who are travelling the same routes during the busiest times of the day.  The research comes out the same week as Britain's first High Occupancy Vehicle (HOC) lane on a motorway was announced for the M62.

The national liftshare network www.liftshare.com operates more than 900 liftshare schemes throughout the UK and to date has had a total of 186,000 registrations.