Official Statistics

Reported road casualties Great Britain: estimates involving driving for work

Updated 30 July 2026

About this factsheet

This factsheet presents the Department for Transport’s analysis of road collisions recorded in STATS19 where at least one driver or rider was travelling for work. It builds on previous research by University College London (UCL), using a methodology that reclassifies vehicles and casualties based on journey purpose and vehicle type.

1. Main findings

This report adjusts information on journey purpose recorded in STATS19 with a number of assumptions, to better estimate the number of casualties in collisions involving drivers or riders making a journey as part of work, though figures are still likely to be underestimates.

On this basis, the overall number of collisions involving a driver or rider travelling as part of work has remained relatively stable between 2015 and 2025, accounting for around a quarter of all reported collisions each year.

Further estimates are that, in 2025:

• 445 people were killed in collisions involving a working driver – accounting for 29% of all road fatalities

• there were 1,703 killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties travelling as part of work (drivers, riders and passengers)

• the percentage of KSI casualties in work-related collisions was 22%, broadly consistent with recent years

• 4,757 non-working casualties were killed or seriously injured in collisions involving a working driver or rider, including 1,183 KSI pedestrian casualties who were hit by working drivers or riders

2. Introduction

The aim of this analysis is to improve understanding of work-related road collisions by refining the classification of vehicles and casualties in STATS19. This includes assessing whether trends in the number and severity of collisions involving drivers or riders travelling as part of work are consistent over time and across casualty types.

2.1 Journey purpose recording in STATS19

Information on journey purpose of vehicles involved in reported road collisions, including recording where a journey is made as part of work, has been recorded in STATS19 since 2005. Figures are shown in table RAS0506.

However, for a relatively large proportion of drivers the journey purpose is recorded as unknown, so that estimates of work-related collisions based purely on this will under-estimate the true number of such collisions. In 2015, 73% of vehicles had an ‘unknown’ journey purpose, and although this fell to 53% in 2025 following the introduction of new categories (for example “personal business or leisure”), the majority of records still lack meaningful journey purpose information.

Improvements in journey purpose recording: As part of the most recent review of the STATS19 collection, changes were made to the recording of journey purpose, to align the categories with those collected in the department’s National Travel Survey. This may provide scope for better estimation of work-related journeys in future, with a majority of records anticipated to use this new version from 2025 onwards.

2.2 Related work

To address the limitations of STATS19 journey purpose recording, University College London (UCL) in their report Driving for work made some additional assumptions to provide a more representative picture.

2.3 Assumptions

In this report we adopted some, but not all, of the assumptions made by UCL. This improves on the STATS19 journey purpose variable alone, but means that the resulting figures are still likely to be underestimates of the true numbers of work-related collisions. The following assumptions have been made:

• vehicle type assumptions: HGVs, buses, agricultural vehicles, and trams were assumed to always be used for work, regardless of their recorded journey purpose ^{[footnote 1]}

• journey purpose reclassification: Taxis and vans coded as “commuting” were reclassified as “working”, based on the nature of their use (for example, tradespeople and taxi drivers typically do not commute in the conventional sense)

These adjustments increased the estimated proportion of vehicles driving for work from 12% to 14% in 2025. UCL made further assumptions related to car and van journeys, based on business mileage of those vehicles, which have not been applied here but could be explored in future updates. Assumptions which involve apportioning vehicles with journey purpose recorded as unknown, were considered but not applied as it appears there are inconsistent approaches to recording other and unknown purposes across different police forces, but this could be further explored in future.

Casualty-level assumptions were also applied to distinguish between working individuals and members of the public:

• drivers of vehicles being used for work purposes were classified as “workers”

• passengers in taxis, private hire vehicles, and buses or coaches were treated as members of the public, even if the vehicle was being driven for work

• pedestrians were also excluded from the working category

• for other vehicle types, casualties were classified as “working” if the vehicle was being driven for work purposes

These assumptions help fill gaps in the data but rely on generalisations that may not hold in all cases, particularly for private vehicles used in informal or gig economy work.

2.4 Limitations

While the reclassification methodology improves the identification of work-related collisions, several limitations remain, including:

• incomplete journey purpose data: The high proportion of ‘unknown’ journey purposes (53% of vehicles in 2025) limits the accuracy of work-related collision estimates, and trends over time may reflect changes in data recording rather than genuine variations

• accuracy of assumptions: Vehicle and casualty classifications rely on assumptions that may not apply universally. For example, not all vans coded as “commuting” are necessarily being used for work

• changes in STATS19 coding: The introduction of new journey purpose categories in 2024 complicates comparisons with earlier years and may affect trend analysis

• underrepresentation of informal work: The methodology may not fully capture gig economy drivers or others using private vehicles for work, leading to underestimation

• casualty misclassification risk: Classifying passengers based on vehicle type and journey purpose may misidentify some individuals, especially when journey purpose is unknown

• lack of comparable exposure data: The analysis does not account for exposure (for example, distance driven), which limits the ability to assess relative collision risk between working and non-working drivers

These limitations should be considered when interpreting the findings, particularly in relation to year-on-year changes and comparisons with other datasets.

3. Work-related collisions

In 2025, there were 22,871 reported collisions involving at least one driver or rider travelling for work. This represents 23% of all police-reported collisions that year, a proportion that has remained relatively stable since 2015.

The highest number of work-related collisions over the last decade occurred in 2015, with 36,472 collisions, while the lowest was in 2020 (21,289), likely influenced by COVID-19 restrictions and reduced traffic volumes.

Table 1: Number and percentage of reported road collisions involving at least one working driver or rider, Great Britain, 2015 to 2025

Year	Number	Percentage
2015	36,472	26
2016	35,058	26
2017	34,014	26
2018	31,105	25
2019	28,871	25
2020	21,289	23
2021	24,983	25
2022	25,388	24
2023	24,979	24
2024	23,770	24
2025	22,871	23

4. Casualties in work-related collisions

In 2025, 445 people were killed in collisions involving a working driver – accounting for 29% of all road fatalities. A total of 6,460 people were killed or seriously injured (KSI) in these collisions, representing 22% of all KSI casualties.

Table 2: Casualties in reported road collisions involving at least one working driver or rider, by severity, Great Britain, 2015 to 2025

Year	Fatal	Serious	Slight	KSI	Fatal (%)	Serious (%)	Slight (%)	KSI (%)
2015	589	7,158	42,066	7,747	34.0	23.5	27.3	24.1
2016	566	6,899	40,346	7,465	31.6	23.5	26.9	24.0
2017	567	6,697	38,640	7,264	31.6	23.6	27.4	24.1
2018	573	6,878	34,664	7,451	32.1	23.8	26.7	24.3
2019	578	6,650	31,644	7,228	33.0	23.8	25.6	24.3
2020	429	4,879	22,456	5,308	29.4	22.4	24.3	22.9
2021	484	5,722	26,131	6,206	31.1	23.0	25.7	23.5
2022	492	6,117	26,451	6,609	28.8	22.5	24.8	22.9
2023	464	6,213	26,019	6,677	28.6	22.7	25.0	23.0
2024	459	6,069	24,405	6,528	28.6	22.2	24.6	22.6
2025	445	6,015	22,921	6,460	28.9	21.2	23.4	21.6

4.1 Working drivers and their passengers

In 2025, 1,482 working drivers or riders were killed or seriously injured in collisions and in total (including working passengers), there were 1,703 KSI casualties travelling as part of work in 2025 .

Table 3: Working driver or rider casualties, by severity, Great Britain, 2015 to 2025

Year	Fatal	Serious	Slight
2015	90	1,771	12,953
2016	88	1,675	12,357
2017	82	1,659	12,048
2018	70	1,672	10,652
2019	70	1,642	10,022
2020	54	1,286	7,761
2021	62	1,631	9,484
2022	64	1,519	9,812
2023	60	1,510	9,566
2024	63	1,528	8,895
2025	50	1,432	7,841

Table 4: Working casualties (driver, rider and passenger) by severity, Great Britain, 2015 to 2025

Year	Fatal	Serious	Slight
2015	108	2,056	15,487
2016	97	1,918	14,842
2017	101	1,918	14,463
2018	89	1,923	12,676
2019	81	1,902	12,022
2020	63	1,463	9,166
2021	78	1,864	11,006
2022	78	1,755	11,398
2023	67	1,758	11,084
2024	71	1,792	10,309
2025	59	1,644	9,149

4.2 Other casualties

Collisions involving working drivers and riders also result in harm to other road users. In 2025, 4,757 non-working casualties were killed or seriously injured in collisions involving a working driver or rider, including 1,183 KSI pedestrian casualties who were hit by working drivers.

Table 5: Non-working casualties in reported road collisions involving at least one working driver or rider, by severity, Great Britain, 2015 to 2025

Year	Fatal	Serious	Slight
2015	481	5,102	26,579
2016	469	4,981	25,504
2017	466	4,778	24,178
2018	484	4,955	21,988
2019	497	4,748	19,622
2020	366	3,416	13,290
2021	406	3,858	15,125
2022	414	4,362	15,053
2023	397	4,455	14,935
2024	388	4,277	14,096
2025	386	4,371	13,772

Table 6: Pedestrian casualties in collisions involving a working driver or rider, by severity and percentage of all pedestrian casualties, Great Britain, 2015 to 2025

Year	Fatal	Serious	Slight	Fatal_pct	Serious_pct	Slight_pct
2015	138	1,328	3,171	33.8	19.8	18.7
2016	146	1,283	3,006	32.6	20.2	17.9
2017	155	1,352	3,199	33.0	21.3	18.8
2018	132	1,296	2,772	28.9	19.9	17.9
2019	141	1,277	2,682	30.0	20.3	17.9
2020	106	823	1,638	30.6	19.5	16.1
2021	112	934	1,889	31.0	19.2	16.5
2022	122	1,072	1,958	31.7	18.6	14.9
2023	116	1,144	1,913	28.6	19.3	14.8
2024	119	1,036	1,858	29.1	18.1	14.2
2025	102	1,081	2,013	28.0	18.1	14.7

5. Vehicle types

Cars were the most common vehicle type being driven for work in injury collisions in 2025, accounting for nearly a third of all cases. Vans and buses also featured prominently, together making up over 30% of the total.

Table 7: Top 10 vehicle types being driven for work involved in injury collisions, Great Britain, 2025

Vehicle Type	Number	Percentage
Car	7,451	28.7
Van 3.5 tonnes mgw or under	5,871	22.6
Bus or coach (17 or more pass seats)	3,023	11.6
Goods 7.5 tonnes and over	2,633	10.1
Taxi or private hire car	2,060	7.9
Motorcycle over 50cc and up to 125cc	1,560	6.0
Pedal cycle	957	3.7
Goods over 3.5t. and under 7.5t	884	3.4
Agricultural vehicle (include diggers etc)	357	1.4
Other vehicle	257	1.0

6. Conclusion and next steps

This analysis provides estimates of the scale and impact of work-related road collisions in Great Britain, applying assumptions to address some – though not all – of the limitations of the STATS19 journey purpose category.

Though these figures are likely to be underestimates, they nonetheless highlight the substantial proportion of road casualties involving working drivers, both among workers themselves and members of the public.

However, the findings must be interpreted with caution due to limitations in the underlying data, particularly the high proportion of unknown journey purposes and the assumptions required to reclassify vehicle use.

6.1 Further work

This work represents a work in progress, which we hope to develop, in particular exploring the potential to identify whether vehicles with unknown journey purposes are likely to be driving for work or not.

Any suggestions for improvements to the estimation method, or for further analysis, would be welcome and can be provided to the road safety statistics team by email to roadacc.stats@dft.gov.uk.

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9. Contact details

Road safety statistics

Email roadacc.stats@dft.gov.uk

1. This differs slightly from UCL’s approach, which grouped agricultural vehicles and trams under a broader “other” category. ↩