How Many Children Die on Britain's Roads Each Year?

Quick answer: In 2024, 64 children aged 0 to 16 were killed in reported road collisions in Great Britain, according to the Department for Transport (DfT). A further 13,112 children in the same age group were injured in collisions of all severities, from slight injuries to serious ones. Children made up 4% of all 1,602 road deaths in Britain in 2024, a small share of the total that still means a child was killed roughly every six days.

How many children were killed in 2024

DfT's final annual figures for 2024 record 64 deaths among children aged 0 to 16. That age band is the one used in DfT's 2024 annual report table of casualties by age and sex, and it is the basis for every child figure in this article.

• 64 children aged 0 to 16 killed in 2024
• 42 boys killed, compared with 22 girls killed
• 13,112 children aged 0 to 16 injured or killed in total, of whom 7,904 were boys and 5,208 were girls
• 1,602 people of all ages killed on Britain's roads in 2024, so children accounted for 4% of deaths

Most child casualties are not fatal: 13,112 casualties were recorded against 64 deaths, so the death toll is only the worst end of a much larger number of children hurt on the roads.

Boys and girls

Boys accounted for almost two-thirds of child deaths in 2024, with 42 boys killed against 22 girls. The same pattern shows up in injuries: 7,904 boys were recorded as casualties, compared with 5,208 girls.

This follows the pattern across all ages: in 2024, 76% of people killed on Britain's roads were male, and 61% of casualties of all severities were male.

DfT does not break down the 2024 child deaths by road user type in its headline annual report, so this article does not claim how many of the 64 were pedestrians, cyclists or car passengers. Across all ages, car occupants accounted for the most deaths at 692, followed by pedestrians at 409, motorcyclists at 340 and pedal cyclists at 82.

How the numbers have changed

Child deaths fell in 2024 compared with the year before, for both boys and girls.

• Male deaths aged 0 to 16 fell by 19% compared with 2023
• Female deaths aged 0 to 16 fell by 4% compared with 2023
• Male casualties aged 0 to 16 rose by 1% compared with 2023, while female casualties fell by 2%

The overall picture for Britain's roads in 2024 was a slight improvement: total deaths fell by 1% to 1,602, killed or seriously injured casualties fell by 1% to 29,467, and casualties of all severities fell by 4% to 128,272. Britain also ranked 4th out of 36 countries with available data for the lowest number of road deaths per million people.

Children in the wider road toll

Children are a small part of the total casualty count, but the ages around them dominate it. People aged 17 to 29 accounted for 22% of deaths and 28% of casualties in 2024, while people aged 70 and over accounted for 22% of deaths but only 8% of casualties. Children aged 0 to 16, by contrast, accounted for 4% of deaths and around a tenth of casualties.

Where deaths happen also matters for children, even though DfT's headline report does not split child deaths by road type. Across all ages in 2024, 956 people were killed on rural roads, 60% of all deaths, while 555 were killed on urban roads and 91 on motorways. Most child journeys happen on urban roads, where most casualties of all severities occur: 79,734 of the 128,272 casualties in 2024 were on urban roads.

What the figures mean for families

No single statistic tells a parent how to keep a child safe, and DfT's figures do not assign blame for individual collisions. The honest summary is that progress is real but slow: total deaths in 2024 were 10% lower than in 2014, and total casualties were 34% lower, but the decline has flattened in recent years. Sixty-four child deaths is lower than the year before, yet it is still 64 families dealing with a loss that road safety work exists to prevent.

For readers who want to check the figures for their own area, the UK road accidents by council area page breaks down police-reported collisions by local authority, and the latest accident reports page shows what is happening on the roads today. More data articles can be found on the articles page.

How these numbers were counted

All figures in this article come from the Department for Transport's Reported road casualties Great Britain, annual report: 2024, based on police-reported collisions recorded through the STATS19 system. The figures are final estimates, published in September 2025.

A death in these statistics means a person who died within 30 days of a reported collision on a public road. Children here means ages 0 to 16, the age band used in DfT's 2024 table of casualties by age and sex. The figures cover Great Britain, meaning England, Scotland and Wales, not Northern Ireland.

Only collisions reported to the police are included, and slight injuries in particular are known to be under-reported, so the true number of children hurt is likely higher than 13,112. Figures for injured casualties are adjusted for changes in how some police forces record injury severity. The latest year can be revised when final data replace provisional estimates, which is why this article uses the final 2024 figures rather than the earlier provisional estimate of 1,633 deaths.