Data reuse caveats: The information was extracted from the Driver Licence Register (DLR) and is current as at 3 May 2021 (this will update over time).

The data is a distinct count of individuals.

It is limited to current licence holders with one or more of the following licence classes, as at 3 May 2021: Class 1 Car - learner, restricted or full Class 6 Motorcycle - learner, restricted or full.

A licence holder must hold a full Class 1 (Car) licence before they can apply for a heavy vehicle licence.

The data is also limited to current licence holders issued with a photo driver licence (PDL).

Region is determined by the physical town or suburb recorded for the driver. It may not reflect the driver's current address.
We added low-population regions into a 'misc' grouping. These regions are Gisborne, Tasman, West Coast, Hawkes Bay and Marlborough Region.

We have not included license holders under 16 , because the legal age to get a learner's license increased from from 15 to 16 on 1 August 2011.

Data quality statement: Address fields are free text and may contain errors which lead to incorrect coding.

Addresses in the driver licence register can often be out of date. It’s therefore difficult to establish what proportion of licence holders are actually still based in a certain location.

Address fields are updated when we receive notification of a change of address from the licence holder.

Notifications for a change of address may come: directly from the licence holder (for example, the licence holder calling the contact centre and updating their address) as an outcome of a transaction against the licence holder on the DLR (including the processing of an application at a driver licensing outlet with an address update).

Data quality caveats: See data quality statement.

Photo by Timothy Chan on Unsplash.