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Travel by personal light-duty vehicles present the greatest risk, while air, rail, and bus travel have much lower death rates. The chart shows the latest information on passenger transportation death rates.
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- 1. Headline figures
- 2. Things you need to know
- 3. Overall casualties and rates
- 4. Casualties and rates by road user type
- 5. Casualties by age and sex
- 6. Casualties by road type
- 7. International comparisions
- 8. Factors contributing to fatalities
- 9. Other topics
Chart 1 shows the trend in fatal road casualties over the last 4 decades. Since 1979, there has been a general downward trend in the number of people killed on roads in Great Britain with a flatter trend in the decade since 2010. In 2022, road casualties showed signs of a return to pre-pandemic trends, increasing compared to 2020 and 2021 when casualty numbers were low, largely as a result of periods of lockdown leading to a reduction in road traffic.
In reported road collisions in Great Britain in 2022, the final estimates are:
•1,711 fatalities, a decline of 2% compared to 2019
•29,742 killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties, a decline of 3% compared to 2019
•135,480 casualties of all severities, a decline of 12% compared to 2019
Considering road collision rates per billion miles travelled, the final estimates show:
2.1 Severity adjustment
The figures in this release for injured casualties are based on adjusting figures reported by the police to take account of changes in the reporting of injury severity by some police forces in recent years. These adjusted figures can reliably be used to compare trends over time across the country. More details can be found in our severity adjustments guidance.
2.2 Data coverage
There is no obligation for people to report all personal injury collisions to the police. These figures, therefore, do not represent the full range of all collisions or casualties in Great Britain. All collisions reported by the police and that occurred on a public highway involving at least one motor vehicle, horse rider or pedal cyclist, and where at least one person was injured, are included in these statistics. Unexpected issues with data collection for 2 police forces - Avon and Somerset Police, and Staffordshire Police - mean the reliability and accuracy of the recorded road collisions in these 2 regions cannot be guaranteed as some collisions may have been misrecorded or not recorded at all. This is unlikely to noticeably impact on the overall Great Britain road collision trends, but caution should be applied when considering geographical breakdowns by police force area (RAS0401) and local authority (RAS0403). More information on STATS19, how road traffic casualty data is collected from police forces and how these figures are produced can be found in the accompanying guidance.
3.1 Casualties by severity
Casualties are broken down into fatalities (people killed in road collisions), and those injured (further split into seriously and slightly injured based on type of injury sustained). Killed and seriously injured casualties are commonly grouped together as ‘KSIs’. It has long been known that non-fatal (and particularly slight) casualties are under-reported to the police, though we believe that the trends shown are likely to reflect genuine changes. Further information is available in the quality section below. Chart 2 and Table 1 show the trend in road casualties by severity over the last decade. Trends in road casualties are affected by a wide range of factors, with 2020 and 2021 being impacted by COVID-19. There is an increase in casualty numbers between 2021 and 2022 - this is due to the impact of national restrictions on 2021 casualty numbers. In the decade prior to the pandemic in 2020, fatalities had been generally stable. 2022 broadly shows a return to pre-pandemic trends. Casualty counts are also impacted by traffic levels with casualty trends following a broadly similar pattern to motor traffic (in terms of billion vehicle miles) during periods of national COVID-19 lockdown. Trends in casualty rates are further explored in the next section. In 2022, there were 328 billion vehicle miles travelled, down 4% compared to 2019. In reported road collisions in Great Britain in 2022, there were an estimated: 1,711 fatalities, a decline of 2% compared to 2019 29,742 KSI casualties, a decline of 3% compared to 2019 135,480 casualties of all severities, a decline of 12% compared to 2019 Chart 2: Reported road casualties by severity and all road traffic (billion vehicle miles) in Great Britain, 2012 to 2022 RAS0201 Table 1: Reported road casualties by severity in Great Britain, 2022 compared with 2019 and 2012 RAS0201
3.2 Trends in casualty rates
Chart 3 and Table 2 show the trend in road casualty rates over the last decade. The patterns in casualty numbers shown above largely reflect changes in traffic patterns, therefore overall casualty rates have remained broadly stable over recent years. This indicates that the reductions in casualties have been associated with reductions in traffic, largely during periods of COVID-19 lockdown. Over the past decade, casualty rates in general fell steadily prior to 2020, with larger reductions in injured casualties than fatalities. This was a period where vehicle traffic increased steadily. In reported road collisions in Great Britain in 2022, there were an estimated: 5 fatalities per billion vehicle miles travelled, an increase of 2% compared to 2019 91 KSI casualties per billion vehicle miles travelled, an increase of 2% compared to 2019 413 casualties of all severities per billion vehicle miles travelled, a decline of 8% compared to 2019 Chart 3: Reported road casualty rates per billion vehicle miles by severity in Great Britain, 2012 to 2022 RAS0201 Table 2: Reported road casualty rates per billion vehicle miles by severity in Great Britain, 2022 compared to 2019 and 2012 RAS0201
Car occupant casualties accounted for 44% of road fatalities and 53% of all road casualties in 2022, and the majority of road collisions involved at least one car.
Vulnerable road users include pedestrians, pedal cyclists, motorcyclists and e-scooter users. These users have higher casualty rates than other vehicle occupants. However very few other road users are killed in collisions involving pedestrians or cyclists. Our separate road safety factsheets provide more detail on pedal cycle, motorcyclist, pedestrian and e-scooter casualties.
Chart 9 and Tables 8 and 9 shows road fatalities and all casualties (including fatal, serious and slight injuries) split by both sex and age group. This shows that generally road fatalities and casualties have decreased for both males and females over the last decade (although male numbers remain consistently higher). Larger decreases were observed in road fatality and casualty numbers during periods of COVID-19 lockdown (in 2020 and 2021), followed by a slight increase in 2022 in a return to pre-pandemic levels - this trend was particularly noticeable among those aged 70 and over.
Overall, in 2022:
•76% of fatalities and 62% of casualties of all severities were male
•3% of fatalities and 10% of casualties were aged 16 years old and under
•25% of fatalities and 29% of casualties were aged 17 to 29 years old
•23% of fatalities and 7% of casualties were aged 70 years old and over
In this report, urban roads 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 rural (Department for Transport types of road definitions).
Chart 10 and Table 10 show road fatalities and all road casualties (including fatal, serious and slight injuries) for motorways, rural roads and urban roads.
In 2022, the majority of road fatalities occurred on rural roads, whereas the majority of all casualties occurred on urban roads. Although motorways account for 21% of road traffic, they account for a much smaller proportion of road fatalities (6%) and casualties (4%). By contrast, rural road fatalities (59%) are over represented compared to the proportion of rural road traffic (44%). Similarly, urban roads account for a much higher proportion of road casualties (63%) than their relative traffic level (35%).
Chart 10: Reported road casualties by severity and traffic proportion for different road types in Great Britain, 2022 RAS0302
Comparisons between countries are only possible for fatalities per million population, as casualties and traffic data are collected less consistently across different countries. Table RAS0404 compares figures for Great Britain and the United Kingdom with others in Europe and, where data is available, the rest of the world.
Chart 13 shows an international comparison of road fatalities per million population. Figures for Great Britain have been among the lowest in the world for many years. In 2022, Great Britain ranked 5 out of 38 countries with available data for lowest number of road fatalities per million population.
Further information about comparisons in road safety progress between countries is available in the European Transport Safety Council’s Performance Index (PIN) for European countries, and the International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD) report for worldwide countries.
Chart 13: Road fatalities per million population by country, 2022 RAS0404
Road collisions occur for a wide range of reasons, including those related to road user behaviour and the roads and vehicles involved. A single collision can be the result of several different factors, so reliably attributing the cause of collisions is difficult. An analysis giving further details was included in the 2019 annual report. However, st...
Alongside this publication, data tables are available providing statistics on other topics including.
Road type breakdowns (RAS03): Including urban and rural roads, and casualties on the strategic road network (SRN). More detailed statistics for SRN roads, including smart motorways, are published by National Highways for example in the smart motorway evidence stocktake reports.
Area comparisons (RAS04): Including police force, country, region and local authority breakdowns.
Vehicles and drivers involved (RAS05): Covering vehicles involved in collisions by type, manoeuvre and driver characteristics.
Value of prevention of collisions (RAS40): Covering estimates of preventing report and unreported collisions, derived from STATS19 collision and casualty numbers together with information on average costs from the Transport Analysis Guidance (TAG) data book.
Besides the published tables, users can explore road casualty data in further detail or for specific areas via our interactive dashboard, data download tool and open dataset.
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