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Reported road casualties in Great Britain: pedestrian factsheet, 2024

Published 25 September 2025

This factsheet presents trends from 2004 onwards. However, grouped data for years from 2020 to 2024 is used widely in this publication in order to allow sufficiently robust analysis by age, sex and other variables.

This factsheet gives an overview and key statistics on pedestrians involved in road collisions in Great Britain as reported by or to the police. This factsheet examines the main trends in collisions involving pedestrians and the casualties involved.

Pedestrians are one of the vulnerable user groups. They are not protected by a vehicle body in the same way car users are, and tend to be harder for drivers to see on the road. They are, therefore, particularly susceptible to injuries.

Data in this factsheet is from 2004 onwards. Serious and slight injuries have been adjusted to account for changes in the severity reporting systems. More information on the change and adjustment process is available in the severity adjustment guidance.

It should be noted that it has been long known that a considerable percentage of non-fatal casualties are not reported to the police. This should be borne in mind when analysing and interpreting the data.

1. Main findings

Between 2004 and 2024:

• fatalities were down 39% from 671 to 409

• serious injuries (adjusted) decreased by 42%

• pedestrian traffic (distance walked) increased by 21%

Averaged over the period 2020 to 2024:

• an average of 7 pedestrians died and 104 were seriously injured (adjusted) per week in reported road collisions

• a majority of pedestrian fatalities (61%) do not occur at or within 20 metres of a junction compared to 50% of all seriously injured (adjusted) pedestrian casualties

• nearly three in five (55%) of pedestrian fatalities were in collisions involving a single car

• 29% of pedestrian fatalities occurred on roads in rural areas compared to 13% of all pedestrian casualties

• 57% of pedestrian killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties were male

• the most common road safety factor allocated to pedestrians in fatal or serious collisions (FSC) with another vehicle was ‘ineffective observation by the pedestrian’. The most common factor allocated to the vehicles involved was ‘ineffective observation by either the driver or rider or pedestrian’

2. Pedestrian traffic and reported casualties

In 2024, 409 pedestrians were killed in Great Britain, whilst 5,823 were reported to be seriously injured (adjusted) and 12,944 slightly injured (adjusted).

Table 1 and chart 1 show that pedestrian traffic (measured by distance walked) has risen between 2004 and 2024 whilst fatalities, serious and slight injuries have fallen.

Between 2023 and 2024, pedestrian fatalities increased by 1% while pedestrian traffic (distance walked) increased by 2%.

Chart 1: Index of pedestrian traffic (distance walked) and reported pedestrian casualties by severity, GB: 2004 to 2024 (Index 2004=100)

Table 1: Number of reported pedestrian casualties by severity and traffic (pedestrian billion miles walked), GB: 2004 to 2024

Year	Killed	Serious	Slight	All	Traffic
2004	671	9,992	24,218	34,881	12.52
2005	671	9,445	23,165	33,281	12.28
2006	675	9,059	21,248	30,982	12.64
2007	646	8,804	20,741	30,191	11.99
2008	572	8,410	19,500	28,482	12.09
2009	500	7,777	18,610	26,887	12.56
2010	405	7,334	18,106	25,845	11.78
2011	453	7,627	18,118	26,198	12.13
2012	420	7,645	17,153	25,218	11.70
2013	398	6,982	16,653	24,033	12.10
2014	446	7,105	17,197	24,748	11.81
2015	408	6,852	16,801	24,061	12.07
2016	448	6,480	16,622	23,550	12.53
2017	470	6,476	16,859	23,805	13.13
2018	456	6,637	15,339	22,432	13.44
2019	470	6,402	14,898	21,770	13.17
2020	346	4,302	10,102	14,750	14.22
2021	361	4,949	11,344	16,654	13.63
2022	385	5,872	13,070	19,327	14.39
2023	405	6,049	12,809	19,263	14.92
2024	409	5,823	12,944	19,176	15.19

Source: DfT STATS19, National Travel Survey and Office for National Statistics population data

3. How far do pedestrians travel?

The National Travel Survey (NTS) provides the number of trips and average distance travelled by person per year for English residents. This is used to derive casualty rates per mile travelled for pedestrians, which also use the Great Britain population figure to estimate total distance walked each year.

4. Casualty rates per mile travelled

The pedestrian casualty rate has fallen for all severities in 2024 compared to 2004.

The overall casualty rate decreased by 55%. The fatality rate decreased by 50% compared to a 52% reduction for serious injuries and a 56% reduction for slight injuries.

Chart 2: Number of reported pedestrian casualties by severity and traffic (pedestrian billion miles walked), GB: 2004 to 2024

Table 2: Casualty rates of pedestrian casualties by severity per billion miles walked, GB: 2004 to 2024

Year	Killed	Serious	Slight	All
2004	54	798	1,934	2,786
2005	55	769	1,886	2,710
2006	53	717	1,681	2,451
2007	54	734	1,729	2,517
2008	47	696	1,613	2,356
2009	40	619	1,482	2,141
2010	34	623	1,537	2,194
2011	37	629	1,494	2,160
2012	36	653	1,466	2,156
2013	33	577	1,377	1,987
2014	38	601	1,456	2,095
2015	34	568	1,392	1,994
2016	36	517	1,326	1,879
2017	36	493	1,284	1,813
2018	34	494	1,141	1,669
2019	36	486	1,131	1,653
2020	24	303	710	1,037
2021	26	363	832	1,221
2022	27	408	908	1,343
2023	27	405	859	1,291
2024	27	383	852	1,262

5. Sex and age comparisons

Between 2020 and 2024, 57% of pedestrian casualties were male and 43% female.

There are 1.3 times more male than female pedestrian casualties overall. This compares to 1.6 times more for 30 to 39 year olds, 1.8 times more for children aged under 12 and 0.9 times more for people over 70 - the only age group in which female casualties outnumber males.

Chart 3: Percentage of pedestrian KSI casualties, by sex and age, GB: 2020 to 2024

6. Which vehicles are involved in collisions with pedestrians?

Between 2020 and 2024, most pedestrian fatalities occurred in a single vehicle collisions involving a car (1,047).

However, the highest proportion of casualties that are fatal occur in 1 vehicle collisions involving an HGV (16.4%). The second highest proportion (10.7%) occurred in collisions when 3 or more vehicles were involved.

Table 3: Pedestrian casualties in reported road collisions by severity showing other vehicles involved GB: 2020 to 2024

Vehicles	Fatalities	Serious injuries	Slight injuries	All casualties	% Fatalities
1 pedal cycle	9	738	1,430	2,177	0.4%
1 motorcycle	51	1,167	2,447	3,665	1.4%
1 car	1,047	19,241	44,370	64,658	1.6%
1 bus or coach	96	924	1,809	2,829	3.4%
1 light goods vehicle	165	1,936	4,177	6,278	2.6%
1 heavy goods vehicle	176	394	502	1,072	16.4%
1 other vehicle	41	740	1,803	2,584	1.6%
2 vehicles involved	201	1,432	3,151	4,784	4.2%
3 or more other vehicles involved	120	422	581	1,123	10.7%
Total	1,906	26,996	60,268	89,170	2.1%

7. Time of day of collisions

The weekday peak time for pedestrian KSIs is from 3pm to 6pm, with a smaller morning peak around 8am. By contrast, the peak is later in the early evening at weekends.

Chart 4: Reported pedestrian KSIs by hour of day and day of week, GB: 2020 to 2024

8. What type of road?

Chart 5 shows that between 2020 and 2024, 66% of pedestrian fatalities occurred on roads in urban areas compared to 87% of all pedestrian casualties. 5% of pedestrian fatalities occurred on motorways. This would be people outside their vehicles whether they are moving at the time or not.

Chart 5: Percentage of pedestrian casualties, by urban or rural classification and severity, GB: 2020 to 2024

In this report, roads in urban areas are defined as those within an area of population of 10,000 or more in England and Wales or more than 3,000 in Scotland - roads outside of these areas are classified as roads in rural areas (Department for Transport types of road definitions).

9. Vehicle movement on the road

A majority of pedestrian fatalities (61%) do not occur at or within 20 metres of a junction compared to 50% of serious injuries (adjusted). However, 37% of fatalities occur at a junction compared to 47% of serious injuries (adjusted).

Table 4: Percentage of pedestrian casualties by severity and junction detail where the collision occurred, GB: 2020 to 2024

Junction	Fatalities	Serious	Slight	All Casualties
Not at or within 20 metres of junction	61.5%	49.8%	48.7%	49.3%
T or staggered junction	23.3%	30.2%	30.0%	29.9%
Crossroads	7.1%	8.2%	7.5%	7.7%
Other junction	5.6%	7.1%	7.6%	7.4%
Using private drive or entrance	1.6%	1.8%	2.1%	2.0%
Unknown	0.2%	0.9%	2.3%	1.8%
Junction with more than four arms (not roundabout)	0.7%	2.0%	1.7%	1.8%

10. Road safety factors in collisions

The most recent STATS19 review (PDF, 2,289KB) recommended that contributory factors (CFs) be replaced with a new system of road safety factors (RSFs). This change in system has resulted in a step change in which factors for the portion of the data that are recorded in the new system. As the majority of the data has still been collected as CFs the analysis in this section is based only on data collected as CFs and then converted to RSFs. Full analysis of the change can be found in our guide to road safety factors.

Road safety factors provide an insight into how and why collisions occur. The factors are largely subjective as they reflect the opinion of the reporting police officer. They are assigned quickly at the occurrence of the collision and often without extensive investigations and so should be interpreted with caution. They are likely to be affected in part by preconceptions police officers have of certain vehicle groups. A maximum of 6 factors can be recorded for each collision.

Table 5 shows the 10 road safety factors that have been allocated to highest proportion of pedestrians that have been involved in fatal or serious collisions (FSC) (between 2020 and 2024) and contrasts this with the proportion allocated to vehicles in these collisions. For collisions with at least one RSF recorded there were 12,778 pedestrians involved in in fatal or serious collisions (FSC) and 12,689 vehicles involved in these collisions. These numbers should be taken into account when comparing the figures in table 5 and table 6.

The 3 most common road safety factor assigned to pedestrians were ‘ineffective observation by the pedestrian’ followed by ‘pedestrian careless or in a hurry’ and ‘affected by alcohol’.

Table 5: Proportion of pedestrians assigned different road safety factors in fatal of serious collisions with vehicles, GB: 2020 to 2024

Pedestrian road safety factor	Percentage
Ineffective observation by either the driver or rider or pedestrian	67%
Pedestrian careless or in a hurry	22%
Affected by alcohol	13%
Non-motorised road user CF - Not mapped to specific RSF	10%
Pedestrian or cyclist or equestrian hard to see	9%
Pedestrian showing risk taking behaviour in carriageway	8%
Incorrect use of crossing facility by person crossing the road	7%
Illness or disability	5%
Other CF - Not mapped to specific RSF	3%
Affected by drugs	3%

The 3 most common road safety factor assigned to vehicles involved in collisions with pedestrians were ‘ineffective observation by either the driver or rider’ followed by ‘driver or rider being aggressive, dangerous or reckless’ and ‘driver or rider travelling too fast for conditions (including loss of control or swerving)’.

Table 6: Proportion of vehicles assigned different road safety factors in fatal of serious collisions with pedestrians, GB: 2020 to 2024

Vehicle road safety factor	Percentage
Ineffective observation by driver or rider or pedestrian	50%
Driver or rider being aggressive or dangerous or reckless	24%
Driver or rider travelling too fast for conditions (including loss of control or swerving)	10%
Driver or rider exceeding speed limit	8%
Driver or rider vision affected by adverse weather or dazzling sun	8%
Driver or rider overshot junction or poor turn or manoeuvre	6%
Distraction to driver or rider from inside or outside or on vehicle	6%
Driver or rider view obscured by stationary or parked vehicles	6%
Driver or rider illegal turn or direction of travel or failed to comply with traffic sign or signal	6%
Affected by drugs	4%

11. Further information

Further information on road collisions and casualties are available from Road Safety Statistics.

Published tables on casualties in reported road collisions are available.

Non-fatal casualties since 2016 have been affected by a large number of police forces changing their reporting systems which has had a large impact on the classification of injuries recorded. Further details of the adjustment for this are in the severity adjustment guidance.

Road collisions and safety statistics guidance including accompanying notes and definitions are available.

Personal travel statistics within Great Britain covering English residents is available from the National Travel Survey.

Road traffic statistics provide estimates of the vehicle miles travelled each year in Great Britain by vehicle type, road category and region.

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14. Contact details

Road safety statistics

Email roadacc.stats@dft.gov.uk