How Many Killed Car Occupants Were Not Wearing a Seatbelt?
Quick answer: In 2025, 24% of motor vehicle occupants killed in Great Britain were recorded as not wearing a seat belt, according to the Department for Transport (DfT). That share covers cases where seatbelt status was known or recorded, with no clear trend over the previous decade. A separate measure found 97.6% of all vehicle drivers in England observed wearing a seatbelt in autumn 2023. The two figures describe different groups, years and places, so they must not be read as one comparison.
The 2025 figure, in full
DfT gives the 24% figure in Reported Road Casualties Great Britain 2025, as the proportion of motor vehicle occupants killed in road traffic collisions that were recorded as not wearing a seat belt. The same release says that around a quarter of car occupant fatalities with known seatbelt-wearing status were recorded as not wearing a seatbelt in 2025.
The qualifier matters. Seatbelt recording is only mandatory for fatal car occupants in STATS19, and the analysis focuses on fatalities where status was known. The 24% figure is a share of known-status cases, not of every person killed, and no killed count should be worked out from it.
For scale, DfT recorded 1,538 people killed on roads in Great Britain in 2025, and 29,918 killed or seriously injured. Those totals cover every road user, not only car occupants, and must not be mixed into the seatbelt share.
Seatbelt non-wearing is one of the "fatal four" behaviours DfT tracks, alongside speed, alcohol and drugs, and mobile device use. In 2025, at least one fatal-four factor was assigned to 63% of fatal collisions. That is a share of collisions, counted differently from the occupant share above: not wearing a seatbelt was the assigned factor in 133 fatal collisions, or 9% of fatal collisions. The two percentages answer different questions and should not be swapped.
This article uses killed occupants with known wearing status, a different group from the passengers in killed or seriously injured casualties covered in Are Teen Passengers Really Buckling Up? The Seatbelt Gap at 12–15.
The everyday wearing rate is a different measure
The wearing survey observes traffic, rather than counting casualties. In autumn 2023, DfT recorded seatbelt use from images of moving vehicles at 25 sites in England, on weekdays in October and November 2023:
- 97.6% of all vehicle drivers observed using a seatbelt
- 95.2% of all vehicle front seat passengers observed using a seatbelt
- 0.9% of car drivers observed not wearing a seatbelt
DfT warns that a different observation method was used in 2023, so the results are not comparable with previous surveys. The survey covers weekdays only, in moving traffic, and hides variations for times of day that are not observed, including the night.
That helps explain the gap between the two headline figures. The survey describes ordinary traffic, where almost everyone observed is wearing a belt. The casualty figures describe only people who were killed, where people travelling without a belt are over-represented.
Who was most likely to be unrestrained
The breakdowns in this section come from the DfT Fatal 4 seatbelts factsheet 2025. They are pooled 2021 to 2025 averages. Every percentage is a share of car occupant fatalities in that group, not a wearing rate for all drivers.
- Age: non-wearing was highest at 25 to 34 (37%), then 17 to 24 (35%), and generally lower at older ages.
- Sex: from age 17 onwards, it was higher for males than females in every age group. At ages 25 to 34, 45% of male fatalities were not wearing a seatbelt, compared with 14% of female fatalities.
- No clear increase or decrease in seatbelt non-wearing among car occupant casualties has been recorded since 2015.
Non-wearing was generally more common among fatalities from more deprived areas in England; see Are Road Casualties Concentrated in Poorer Areas?.
These breakdowns describe who the fatalities were. They do not show that 37% of all drivers aged 25 to 34 travel without a seatbelt.
Where and when non-wearing was highest
Pooled figures differ by time, seat, road type and distance from home:
- Time of day: between 11pm and 6am, 43% of car occupant fatalities were not wearing a seatbelt, compared with 20% between 6am and 11pm. The share was highest at 3am (52%) and lowest at 3pm (9%).
- Seating position: rear seat passengers had the highest share not wearing a seatbelt, at 40%, compared with 23% of drivers and 21% of front seat passengers.
- Road type: the share not wearing a seatbelt was highest on roads in urban areas, at 37%, compared with 24% on motorways and 21% on roads in rural areas. Rural roads were lowest.
- Distance from home: non-wearing was highest for collisions under 1 mile from home, at 35%, and generally higher closer to home.
The drug-involved crash toll is counted separately, with its own definition and testing limits: How Many People Die in Drug-Involved Crashes Each Year?. The tallies must be kept apart, because one collision can involve more than one behaviour.
How these numbers were counted
All figures come from DfT's Reported Road Casualties Great Britain 2025 release, based on police-reported personal injury collisions recorded through STATS19 on public roads in Great Britain, and from DfT's seatbelt-wearing survey for England in autumn 2023. The sources are the DfT safety performance indicators, the DfT risk behaviours chapter, the DfT Fatal 4 seatbelts factsheet 2025 and the DfT seatbelt wearing rates for England 2023.
Seatbelt status has a relatively high degree of missing data: even for car occupant fatalities, status was unknown in approaching half of cases. Police recording uses information available shortly after the collision, not a detailed forensic investigation, although DfT notes that more in-depth investigation figures were broadly similar.
Only police-reported collisions are included; slight injuries are under-reported, and the latest year can be revised. Figures for every council area are on the UK road accidents page.
In this story
- United Kingdom: live accidents and road deaths
- Driving laws in United Kingdom
- Road accidents reported today
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