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How Many People Die on UK Motorways Each Year?

Published 5 min read By Live Accident Tracker Editorial

Quick answer: 88 people were killed on motorways in Great Britain in 2025, according to the Department for Transport's Reported Road Casualties in Great Britain: Final Results 2025. That is just 6% of the 1,538 people killed on British roads that year, even though motorways carry 21% of all traffic. By contrast, A-roads claimed 800 lives — 52% of all road deaths. Motorways are the safest roads in Britain per mile travelled.

Motorways in 2025: the numbers

Motorways recorded the smallest share of casualties of any road class in 2025, despite carrying more than a fifth of all traffic:

  • 88 people killed on motorways in 2025
  • 905 people killed or seriously injured on motorways
  • 5,003 casualties of all severities on motorways
  • 71.9 billion vehicle miles travelled on motorways — 21% of all traffic in Great Britain

The Department for Transport's own summary is direct: a person is less likely to be involved in an injury collision when travelling on a motorway than on urban or rural roads. Motorways have generally had the lowest casualty rates of any road type in every year since 2009, when the current rate series begins.

A-roads carry the biggest toll

If motorways are the safest roads, A-roads are where most of the dying happens. In 2025:

  • A-roads: 800 people killed (52% of all road deaths), 13,100 killed or seriously injured, 56,566 casualties, 152.3 billion vehicle miles
  • Other roads: 650 people killed, 15,914 killed or seriously injured, 66,314 casualties, 122.0 billion vehicle miles
  • Motorways: 88 people killed, 905 killed or seriously injured, 5,003 casualties, 71.9 billion vehicle miles

A-roads carry the most traffic of any class and the most deaths. They include fast dual carriageways and single carriageways, they pass through towns and villages, and they carry every kind of road user. That mix, at speed, is what makes them dangerous.

Why motorways are safer per mile

Worked out from the Department for Transport's own tables, the fatality rate per billion vehicle miles in 2025 was about 1.2 deaths on motorways, about 5.3 on A-roads and about 6.0 on rural roads. In other words, a mile driven on an A-road carried roughly four times the risk of death of a mile driven on a motorway.

The reasons are built into the road itself. Motorways have no oncoming traffic, because the carriageways are separated. There are no right turns across traffic and no roundabouts or crossroads — traffic joins and leaves only by slip road. Pedestrians, cyclists and slow vehicles are not allowed on them.

None of that makes motorways risk-free. Eighty-eight people still died on them in 2025, and 905 were killed or seriously injured. High speed means that when a crash does happen, it is often severe. But the design removes the most common causes of fatal crashes on other roads: head-on collisions, junction collisions and collisions with vulnerable road users.

Single carriageways and 60 mph roads

The most dangerous roads in Britain are not motorways or city streets. They are single carriageways — one lane in each direction, with oncoming traffic a few feet away. In 2025:

  • Single carriageways: 1,187 people killed — 77% of all road deaths
  • Dual carriageways: 280 people killed
  • Roundabouts: 46 people killed

The speed limit figures, which exclude motorways, tell the same story from a different angle. The largest number of deaths in 2025 happened on roads with a 60 mph limit: 508 people killed. Next came 30 mph roads, with 439 deaths, then 40 mph roads with 177, 50 mph roads with 120, 20 mph roads with 104 and 70 mph roads with 102.

Most 60 mph roads are rural single carriageways, so the two patterns overlap: the same roads appear in both counts. Rural roads accounted for 923 deaths (60% of the total) in 2025 while carrying only 45% of traffic, against 527 deaths on urban roads. Collisions on rural roads are more likely to kill because speeds are higher and emergency help takes longer to arrive.

England's strategic roads

England's motorways and major A-roads are managed by National Highways as the Strategic Road Network. In 2025 its motorways recorded 84 deaths and 785 killed or seriously injured over 63.3 billion vehicle miles — the lowest rates in the country — while locally managed A-roads and motorways recorded 555 deaths and 10,339 killed or seriously injured. Locally managed roads carry only about one and a half times as much traffic as the Strategic Road Network motorways, yet recorded more than three times as many killed or seriously injured casualties.

For a wider view, Canada recorded 2,050 road deaths in 2024, the United States recorded 39,254, and Ireland recorded 188 in 2025 — different countries, different networks, but the same lesson that separated high-speed roads are the safest per mile. See the UK page for the full British picture by local area.

How these numbers were counted

All figures in this article come from the Department for Transport, Reported Road Casualties in Great Britain 2025: Road type and environment, part of the final results of Reported Road Casualties in Great Britain 2025. The figures are based on personal injury collisions reported to the police through the STATS19 system. In 2025 there were 1,538 reported road fatalities in Great Britain — the lowest total outside the years affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and down 4% from 1,602 in 2024 — along with 29,918 killed or seriously injured casualties and 127,883 casualties of all severities.

Great Britain means England, Scotland and Wales; Northern Ireland publishes its own figures separately. The per-mile rates in the "Why motorways are safer" section are worked out from the Department for Transport's published counts and traffic figures, not quoted from the report. Collisions that the police never hear about are not in these figures, so the true number of injuries is higher than the reported total.

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