Accredited official statistics

Reported road casualties Great Britain: pedal cycle factsheet, 2025

Published 30 July 2026

This factsheet presents trends from 2004 onwards. However, grouped data for years from 2021 to 2025 is used widely in order to allow sufficiently robust analysis by age, sex and other variables

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

Pedal cyclists 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. Non-fatal casualties for pedal cyclists are amongst the most likely to be under-reported in road casualty data since cyclists have no obligation to inform the police of collisions. This should be borne in mind when analysing and interpreting the data.

1. Main findings

Between 2004 and 2025:

• fatalities were down 41% from 134 to 79

• serious injuries increased by 34%

• pedal cycle traffic increased by 42%

Averaged over the period 2021 to 2025:

• an average of 2 pedal cyclists died and 77 were seriously injured per week in reported road casualties

• a majority of pedal cycle fatalities (58%) do not occur at or within 20 metres of a junction compared to 40% of all seriously injured pedal cycle casualties

• almost half (45%) of pedal cycle fatalities were in 2 vehicle collisions between a pedal cycle and a car

• 54% of pedal cycle fatalities occurred on roads in rural areas compared to 30% of traffic

• 82% of pedal cycle killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties were male

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

2. Pedal cycle traffic and reported casualties

In 2025, 79 pedal cyclists were killed in Great Britain, whilst 4,311 were reported to be seriously injured and 11,652 slightly injured.

Table 1 and Chart 1 show that pedal cycle traffic rose between 2004 and 2025 faster than serious injuries whilst fatalities and slight injuries have fallen.

The overall number of pedal cyclist casualties has steadily fallen over the decade from 2014.

During 2025, pedal cyclist fatalities decreased by 4% while pedal cyclist traffic increased by 4%.

Chart 1: Index of pedal cycle traffic and reported pedal cyclist casualties by severity, GB: 2004 to 2025 (Index 2004=100)

Table 1: Number of reported pedal cycle casualties by severity and traffic (pedal cycle billion vehicle miles), GB: 2004 to 2025

Year	Killed	Serious	Slight	All	Traffic
2004	134	3,206	13,308	16,648	2.59
2005	148	3,224	13,189	16,561	2.73
2006	146	3,273	12,777	16,196	2.86
2007	136	3,384	12,675	16,195	2.62
2008	115	3,406	12,776	16,297	2.93
2009	104	3,649	13,311	17,064	3.06
2010	111	3,719	13,355	17,185	3.10
2011	107	4,252	14,856	19,215	3.17
2012	118	4,406	14,567	19,091	3.35
2013	109	4,369	14,960	19,438	3.24
2014	113	4,782	16,392	21,287	3.59
2015	100	4,402	14,342	18,844	3.37
2016	102	4,200	14,175	18,477	3.36
2017	101	4,203	14,017	18,321	3.46
2018	99	4,202	13,249	17,550	3.52
2019	100	4,062	12,721	16,883	3.63
2020	141	4,152	12,001	16,294	5.30
2021	111	4,176	12,171	16,458	4.20
2022	91	3,940	11,662	15,693	3.90
2023	87	3,843	11,069	14,999	3.61
2024	82	3,753	10,714	14,549	3.52
2025	79	4,311	11,652	16,042	3.67

Source: DfT STATS19 and National Road Traffic Census

3. How far do pedal cyclists travel?

There are 2 sources of distances travelled published by the Department:

• the National Travel Survey (NTS) which 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

• the National Road Traffic Census estimates based on annual traffic count data which produces total vehicle miles cycled by type of road. This is used to derive casualty rates per mile travelled for vehicle occupants

4. Casualty rates per mile travelled

The pedal cycle casualty rate has fallen for all severities in 2025 compared to 2004.

The overall casualty rate decreased by 32%. The fatality rate decreased by 58% compared to a 5% reduction for serious injuries and a 38% reduction for slight injuries.

Chart 2: Index of casualty rates of pedal cycle casualties by severity, GB: 2004 to 2025 (Index 2004=100)

Table 2: Casualty rates of pedal cycle casualties by severity per billion vehicle miles travelled, GB: 2004 to 2025

Year	Killed	Serious	Slight	All
2004	52	1,235	5,129	6,416
2005	54	1,179	4,824	6,057
2006	51	1,144	4,465	5,659
2007	52	1,291	4,834	6,177
2008	39	1,162	4,360	5,562
2009	34	1,193	4,350	5,577
2010	36	1,201	4,313	5,549
2011	34	1,343	4,693	6,070
2012	35	1,313	4,342	5,690
2013	34	1,347	4,611	5,991
2014	32	1,333	4,571	5,936
2015	30	1,307	4,258	5,594
2016	30	1,249	4,216	5,495
2017	29	1,213	4,046	5,289
2018	28	1,194	3,764	4,986
2019	28	1,120	3,506	4,653
2020	27	784	2,265	3,075
2021	26	995	2,899	3,920
2022	23	1,011	2,992	4,026
2023	24	1,064	3,064	4,152
2024	23	1,065	3,040	4,128
2025	22	1,174	3,172	4,367

5. Sex and age comparisons

Between 2021 and 2025, 82% of pedal cycle KSI casualties were male and 18% female.

There are 5 times more male than female pedal cycle KSI casualties overall. This compares to 10 times more for 12 to 15 year olds and 3 times more for 25 to 29 year olds.

Chart 3: Percentage of pedal cycle KSI casualties, by sex and age, GB: 2021 to 2025

6. Which other vehicles are involved in collisions with pedal cyclists?

Between 2021 and 2025, most pedal cycle fatalities occurred in 2 vehicle collisions involving a car (203).

However, the highest proportion of casualties that are fatal occur in 2 vehicle collisions involving an HGV (4.8%). However, the second highest proportion (2.3%) occurred in collisions when no other vehicle was involved.

Table 3: Pedal cycle casualties in reported road collisions by severity showing other vehicles involved, GB: 2021 to 2025

Other vehicles	Fatalities	Serious injuries	Slght injuries	All casualties	% Fatalities
No other vehicles involved	75	1,477	1,719	3,271	2.3%
1 pedal cycle	6	396	715	1,117	0.5%
1 motorcycle	2	388	1,320	1,710	0.1%
1 car	203	14,310	44,987	59,500	0.3%
1 bus or coach	13	306	811	1,130	1.2%
1 light goods vehicle	47	1,711	4,727	6,485	0.7%
1 heavy goods vehicle	41	285	530	856	4.8%
1 other vehicle	16	418	930	1,364	1.2%
2 or more other vehicles involved	47	731	1,530	2,308	2.0%
Total	450	20,024	57,267	77,741	0.6%

7. Time of day of collisions

The weekday peak time for pedal cyclist KSIs is from 7am to 10am and from 4pm to 7pm. By contrast, the pattern differs for Saturday and Sunday for both trips and KSIs. During the weekend there is a single peak around mid-morning (10 am to 12 noon) which gradually tails off during the afternoon and evening.

Chart 4: Reported pedal cyclist KSIs by hour of day and day of week, GB: 2021 to 2025

8. What type of road?

Chart 5 shows that between 2021 and 2025, 54% of pedal cycle fatalities occurred on roads in rural areas compared to 30% of traffic. The proportion of non-fatal casualties on roads in rural areas, however, were lower than the proportion of traffic.

Chart 5: Percentage of pedal cycle casualties, by urban rural classification and severity and traffic, GB: 2021 to 2025

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 pedal cycle fatalities (58%) do not occur at or within 20 metres of a junction compared to 40% of serious injuries. However, 39% of fatalities occur at a junction compared to 53% of serious injuries. The remaining casualties occur at either unknown junctions, or using private drives or entrances.

Table 4: Percentage of pedal cycle KSI casualties by severity and junction detail where the collision occurred, GB: 2021 to 2025

Junction	Fatalities	Serious	Slight	All Casualties
Not at or within 20 metres of junction	58.4%	40.5%	35.0%	36.5%
T or staggered junction	26.2%	34.5%	37.0%	36.3%
Crossroads	8.0%	10.8%	11.3%	11.1%
Other junction	4.4%	6.2%	6.4%	6.3%
Unknown	1.1%	3.8%	5.6%	5.1%
Using private drive or entrance	1.3%	2.5%	3.0%	2.9%
Junction with more than four arms (not roundabout)	0.4%	1.6%	1.8%	1.7%

10. Road safety factors in collisions

The most recent STATS19 review 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 for 2025 has been collected directly as RSFs the analysis in this section is based only on the data collected as RSFs, excluding any data collected as CFs and then converted to RSFs. The analysis in this section starts in 2024 as the first year where a non-trivial amount of data was directly collected as 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 pedal cyclists that have been involved in FSCs (between 2024 and 2025) and contrasts this with how frequently these factors are allocated to non-pedal cyclists in these collisions. There were 3,294 vehicles involved in these collisions, of which 1,474 were pedal cyclists and 1,820 were non-pedal cyclists. These proportions should be taken into account when comparing the proportions in table 5.

The most commonly assigned road safety factor assigned for both pedal cyclists and other vehicle types was ‘ineffective observation by either the driver or rider or pedestrian’ .This was followed by ‘Pedestrian or cyclist or equestrian hard to see’ for pedal cyclists and ‘Driver or rider overshot junction or poor turn or manoeuvre’ for other vehicle types. The third most common factor assigned to pedal cyclists was ‘Driver or rider overshot junction or poor turn or manoeuvre’, for other vehicle types the third most common factor was ‘Driver or rider passing too close to another road user or pedestrian’.

Table 5: Proportion of vehicles involved in fatal or serious collisions with pedal cycle assigned different road safety factors, by road safety factor and vehicle type GB: 2024 to 2025

Road Safety Factor	Pedal cyclists (%)	Non-pedal cyclists (%)	Any vehicle involved (%)
Ineffective observation by either the driver or rider or pedestrian	45%	63%	55%
Pedestrian or cyclist or equestrian hard to see	21%	5%	12%
Driver or rider overshot junction or poor turn or manoeuvre	17%	20%	19%
Driver or rider being aggressive or dangerous or reckless	12%	10%	11%
Driver or rider illegal turn or direction of travel or failed to comply with traffic sign or signal	11%	7%	9%
Driver or rider travelling too fast for conditions (including loss of control or swerving)	11%	4%	7%
Vehicle entering road from pavement	8%	0%	4%
Driver or rider passing too close to another road user or pedestrian	8%	14%	11%
Driver or rider inexperienced or learner	6%	3%	4%
Driver or rider exceeding speed limit	6%	6%	6%

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 covering residents of England within Great Britain 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