New figures from the Central Statistics Office show that Irish licensed vehicles travelled a total of 48.8 billion kilometres in 2017 with each vehicle travelling, on average, 18,160 kilometres.
The CSO's Transport Omnibus figures show that Private cars accounted for 77.5% of the total number of licensed vehicles and 76.3% of the total distance travelled in 2017.
On average, each private car travelled 17,881 kilometres, the CSO said.
Meanwhile, goods vehicles made 12.8 million laden journeys and transported a total of 147.2 million tonnes of freight.
The CSO said that the overall amount of road freight activity was 11.8 billion tonne-kilometres in 2017, an increase of 1.7% compared with 2016.
Today's figures also show that a total of 189,095 penalty point endorsement notices were issued last year - down 4.9% on the previous year.
67.8% of the penalty point endorsement notices issued in 2017 were for speeding with men incurring more penalty point endorsement notices than women.
Today's figures from the CSO also show that a total of 217.6 million passengers were carried on scheduled bus services last year.
The CSO's Transport Omnibus figures also showed that another 37.6 million passengers travelled on the Luas and 45.5 million passengers travelled by rail in 2017.
The CSO said that Iarnród Éireann carried 546,000 tonnes of freight last year, adding that the main commodity carried was mineral ores.
The CSO also noted that the largest number of journeys by users of the bicycle sharing scheme in Dublin was in May when 388,889 journeys were made.
Meanwhile, a total of 34.5 million passengers passed through Irish airports in 2017, an increase of 5.1% on 2016. Dublin airport accounted for 85.3% of those passengers.
The CSO noted that the Dublin-Heathrow route carried the most air passengers - a total of 1,804,020 - last year.
