Accredited official statistics

Reported road casualties Great Britain: pedestrian 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 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 2025:

• fatalities were down 46% from 671 to 364

• serious injuries decreased by 39%

• pedestrian traffic (distance walked) increased by 21%

Averaged over the period 2021 to 2025:

• an average of 7 pedestrians died and 109 were seriously injured 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 49% of all seriously injured pedestrian casualties

• nearly three in five (54%) of pedestrian fatalities were in collisions involving a single car

• 30% of pedestrian fatalities occurred on roads in rural areas compared to 12% 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 ‘pedestrian careless or in a hurry’. 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 2025, 364 pedestrians were killed in Great Britain, whilst 5,958 were reported to be seriously injured and 13,656 slightly injured .

Table 1 and chart 1 show that pedestrian traffic (measured by distance walked) has risen between 2004 and 2025 whilst fatalities, serious and slight injuries have fallen.

Between 2024 and 2025, pedestrian fatalities decreased by 11% while pedestrian traffic (distance walked) showed little change.

Chart 1: Index of pedestrian traffic (distance walked) and reported pedestrian casualties by severity, GB: 2004 to 2025 (Index 2004=100)

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

Year	Killed	Serious	Slight	All	Traffic
2004	671	9,783	24,427	34,881	12.52
2005	671	9,270	23,340	33,281	12.28
2006	675	8,897	21,410	30,982	12.64
2007	646	8,649	20,896	30,191	11.99
2008	572	8,266	19,644	28,482	12.09
2009	500	7,638	18,749	26,887	12.56
2010	405	7,193	18,247	25,845	11.78
2011	453	7,469	18,276	26,198	12.13
2012	420	7,505	17,293	25,218	11.78
2013	398	6,848	16,787	24,033	12.18
2014	446	6,954	17,348	24,748	11.90
2015	408	6,709	16,944	24,061	12.16
2016	448	6,347	16,755	23,550	12.63
2017	470	6,360	16,975	23,805	13.20
2018	456	6,521	15,455	22,432	13.50
2019	470	6,295	15,005	21,770	13.24
2020	346	4,229	10,175	14,750	14.24
2021	361	4,862	11,431	16,654	13.68
2022	385	5,774	13,168	19,327	14.53
2023	405	5,941	12,917	19,263	14.98
2024	409	5,723	13,044	19,176	15.19
2025	364	5,958	13,656	19,978	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. NTS data for 2025 was not available at the time of publication and therfore the figures for 2024 have been used as a proxy instead.

4. Casualty rates per mile travelled

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

The overall casualty rate decreased by 53%. The fatality rate decreased by 55% compared to a 50% reduction for serious injuries and a 54% reduction for slight injuries.

Chart 2: Number of reported pedestrian casualties by severity and traffic (pedestrian billion miles walked), GB: 2004 to 2025

Table 2: Casualty rates of pedestrian casualties by severity per billion miles walked, GB: 2004 to 2025

Year	Killed	Serious	Slight	All
2004	54	781	1,951	2,786
2005	55	755	1,900	2,710
2006	53	704	1,694	2,451
2007	54	721	1,742	2,517
2008	47	684	1,625	2,356
2009	40	608	1,493	2,141
2010	34	611	1,549	2,194
2011	37	616	1,507	2,160
2012	36	637	1,468	2,141
2013	33	562	1,378	1,973
2014	37	584	1,457	2,079
2015	34	552	1,394	1,979
2016	35	502	1,326	1,864
2017	36	482	1,286	1,803
2018	34	483	1,144	1,661
2019	36	475	1,133	1,644
2020	24	297	714	1,036
2021	26	355	835	1,217
2022	26	397	906	1,330
2023	27	397	862	1,286
2024	27	377	859	1,262
2025	24	392	899	1,315

5. Sex and age comparisons

Between 2021 and 2025, 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 as many 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: 2021 to 2025

6. Which vehicles are involved in collisions with pedestrians?

Between 2021 and 2025, most pedestrian fatalities occurred in a single vehicle collisions involving a car (1048).

However, the highest proportion of casualties that are fatal occur in 1 vehicle collisions involving an HGV (15.3%). The second highest proportion (10.1%) 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: 2021 to 2025

Vehicles	Fatalities	Serious injuries	Slight injuries	All casualties	% Fatalities
1 pedal cycle	7	859	1,705	2,571	0.3%
1 motorcycle	53	1,234	2,571	3,858	1.4%
1 car	1,048	19,974	46,886	67,908	1.5%
1 bus or coach	100	1,033	1,987	3,120	3.2%
1 light goods vehicle	175	2,004	4,469	6,648	2.6%
1 heavy goods vehicle	169	401	537	1,107	15.3%
1 other vehicle	46	824	2,058	2,928	1.6%
2 vehicles involved	209	1,501	3,395	5,105	4.1%
3 or more other vehicles involved	117	429	607	1,153	10.1%
Total	1,924	28,258	64,216	94,398	2.0%

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: 2021 to 2025

8. What type of road?

Chart 5 shows that between 2021 and 2025, 65% 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: 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 pedestrian fatalities (61%) do not occur at or within 20 metres of a junction compared to 49% of serious injuries. However, 37% of fatalities occur at a junction compared to 48% of serious injuries.

Table 4: Percentage of pedestrian 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	60.6%	49.0%	48.0%	48.6%
T or staggered junction	23.1%	29.9%	30.1%	29.9%
Crossroads	7.3%	8.4%	7.6%	7.8%
Other junction	5.8%	7.4%	7.6%	7.5%
Unknown	0.6%	1.5%	2.9%	2.4%
Using private drive or entrance	1.8%	1.8%	2.1%	2.0%
Junction with more than four arms (not roundabout)	0.9%	2.1%	1.7%	1.8%

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 pedestrians that have been involved in FSCs (between 2024 and 2025) and contrasts this with the proportion allocated to vehicles in these collisions. For collisions with at least one RSF recorded there were 3,300 pedestrians involved in FSCs and 3,986 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 ‘pedestrian careless or in a hurry’ followed by ‘ineffective observation by the pedestrian’ and ‘incorrect use of crossing facility by person crossing the road’.

Table 5: Proportion of pedestrians assigned different road safety factors in fatal of serious collisions with vehicles, GB: 2024 to 2025

Pedestrian road safety factor	Percentage
Pedestrian careless or in a hurry	56%
Ineffective observation by either the driver or rider or pedestrian	34%
Incorrect use of crossing facility by person crossing the road	29%
Pedestrian or cyclist or equestrian hard to see	21%
Pedestrian showing risk taking behaviour in carriageway	20%
Affected by alcohol	7%
Illness or disability	3%
Affected by drugs	1%
Using mobile device	1%
Road surface was slippery due to weather	1%

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 ‘distraction to driver or rider from inside or outside or on vehicle’.

Table 6: Proportion of vehicles assigned different road safety factors in fatal of serious collisions with pedestrians, GB: 2024 to 2025

Vehicle road safety factor	Percentage
Ineffective observation by driver or rider or pedestrian	53%
Driver or rider being aggressive or dangerous or reckless	13%
Distraction to driver or rider from inside or outside or on vehicle	12%
Driver or rider exceeding speed limit	12%
Driver or rider overshot junction or poor turn or manoeuvre	11%
Driver or rider passing too close to another road user or pedestrian	10%
Driver or rider view obscured by stationary or parked vehicles	10%
Driver or rider travelling too fast for conditions (including loss of control or swerving)	8%
Driver or rider vision affected by adverse weather or dazzling sun	7%
Driver or rider view obscured by blind spot	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