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

Quick answer: 1,538 people were killed on Britain's roads in 2025, the Department for Transport's final figures show — 4% fewer than in 2024 and the lowest annual total outside the pandemic years. But the wider picture is mixed: 29,918 people were killed or seriously injured, 4% more than in 2024, while total casualties barely moved at 127,883.

The headline numbers for 2025

The DfT's final Reported Road Casualties results for Great Britain in 2025, published on 30 July 2026, report:

• 1,538 fatalities — down 4% on 2024's 1,602
• 29,918 killed or seriously injured (KSI) — up 4% on 2024
• 127,883 casualties of all severities — little changed on 2024
• 4 road deaths per billion vehicle miles travelled

Deaths kept falling, but serious injuries moved the other way. That split — fewer deaths, more life-changing injuries — is the central story of the 2025 figures. See how Britain compares with the rest of the world on the world accident statistics page.

Who dies on the roads

Car occupants remain the largest single group, but vulnerable road users — motorcyclists, pedestrians and cyclists together — now account for more than half of all deaths:

• Car occupants: 629 killed in 2025, down 9% on 2024 — 41% of all deaths
• Motorcyclists: 386 killed, up 14% — a quarter of all deaths
• Pedestrians: 364 killed, down 11%
• Pedal cyclists: 79 killed, down 4%

Men accounted for 77% of deaths and 61% of all casualties. By age, 23% of those killed were aged 17 to 29 and 24% were aged 70 or over.

The motorcyclist outlier

Motorcyclists are the exception to nearly every improving trend in the 2025 data. They made up 25% of road deaths while accounting for only about 1% of traffic — and 386 deaths is the highest annual total in a decade, with fatalities rising in both 2024 and 2025. KSI casualties among motorcyclists rose 7% to 6,096.

The vulnerability gap is stark: when a motorcyclist is hurt in a collision, 39% of the time the injuries are fatal or serious, compared with 17% for car occupants. A person is far more likely to be killed or injured per mile travelled on a motorcycle than in any other vehicle.

Deaths down, serious injuries up

The 2025 figures are the first full annual benchmark against the Government's new Road Safety Strategy, published in January 2026 — the first national road safety strategy in more than a decade. It sets an ambition to cut deaths and serious injuries by 65% by 2035 (and 70% for children under 16), measured against a 2022–2024 baseline. With KSI casualties rising 4% in 2025, the strategy starts from a hard position.

Drink-driving is one of the strategy's named targets: the Government is consulting on lowering the limit in England and Wales — the current rules are explained on the UK drink-drive limit page. Young drivers are another focus: drivers aged 17 to 24 are just 6% of licence holders but are involved in 24% of fatal and serious collisions, according to the Government's strategy launch.

Four deaths a day

Divide 1,538 deaths by 365 days and the toll averages out at just over four deaths every single day — a figure the Government itself uses when describing the scale of the problem. Behind each one is a family, a workplace and a community, which is why road deaths are counted one by one in police reports rather than estimated.

Britain's roads remain among the safest in the world: in 2024 Great Britain ranked 4th out of 36 countries with available data for the lowest number of road deaths per million people, according to the DfT's international comparisons. The challenge set by the new strategy is to keep that standing while finally restarting the long decline in deaths and serious injuries, which has largely stalled since 2010.

How these numbers were counted

The figures come from the Department for Transport's Reported Road Casualties Great Britain, final results for 2025, published 30 July 2026 — accredited official statistics drawn from police-reported injury collisions (the STATS19 system). KSI figures are adjusted for changes in how some police forces record injury severity. Non-fatal casualties, especially slight injuries, are under-reported to the police, so the KSI trend is the more reliable signal of what is happening on the roads. The statistics cover Great Britain only. These are final figures; they supersede the provisional 2025 estimates published in June 2026. Live reports from today's roads are on today's accident map, and figures for every council area are on the UK road accidents page.