Eurostat collects road transport statistics by two means:

1. Data on infrastructure, transport equipment, enterprises, economic performance, employment, traffic, aggregated data on transport of passengers and goods as well as data on accidents are collected using the Common Questionnaire of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), Eurostat and the International Transport Forum (ITF, in the framework of OECD). The method of the Common Questionnaire data collection is presented in a separate document.

2. Data on carriage of goods by road, using heavy goods vehicles, are based on a continuum of legal acts:

2.1 Data collection on carriage of goods by road until 1998 (included) was based on Directives 78/546/EEC and 89/462/EEC and covered tonnes and tonne-kilometres only.

2.2 Data since the reference period 1999 are derived from micro-data collected in the framework of Regulation (EU) No 70/2012 of the European parliament and of the council on statistical returns in respect of the carriage of goods by road, a recast of Council Regulation (EC) No 1172/98 which has replaced the previous Directives. The figures are aggregated on the basis of sample surveys carried out by the reporting countries. The data cover tonnes, tonne-kilometres, vehicle-kilometres and numbers of journeys.