Over 8,000 motorcycles were put onto the Maltese roads in the past three years, bringing the stock at the end of 2018 up to 27,329.

Whereas in 2015, they only made up 5.5% of the vehicles on the road, the percentage has now nudged up to 7.1%, according to figures released on Thursday by the National Statistics Office.

The overall number of vehicles has been growing steadily over the years and the stock of licensed cars reached 385,326 by the end of last year, with 26,497 vehicles being added to the already congested roads. Like previous years, more used vehicles were registered than new ones.

In spite of the ever-growing network of charging points for electric cars, uptake by the public is still slow, with only 926 at the end of the year.

However, there are over 2,800 vehicles that are hybrid, using either fuel or electric power, or LPG.