This study evaluates how representative driving cycles are of real-world traffic. Data from a study involving test subjects conducted in 1998 in Västerås (SDPS-98) was used to represent real-world traffic. The driving cycles studied were EDC, FTP75, US06 and A9 (modem cycles). This paper is divided into two sections, one which compares the different driving cycles and real-world traffic with respect to speed and distribution of acceleration, and one in which the driving cycles and real-world traffic are compared with respect to driving pattern sequences. Amongst other things, the results showed that there was remarkably little correlation between the driving cycles and real-world traffic from a driving pattern sequence perspective.