About CrashStats: UK road accident data and sources

CrashStats turns the 9,116,625 road collisions police recorded in Great Britain from 1979 to 2025 into accident statistics for 351 council areas (plus 42 former districts), 4,923 roads, 2,851 towns, 2,813 postcode districts and 12,033 accident hotspots, with a page for every crash.

Live road closures on England’s motorways and major A roads, and on Welsh motorways and trunk roads, refresh every 5 minutes.

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About page hero: a police officer with a notebook recording details beside a damaged car at the roadside, daytime, cones and a patrol car behind, no readable number plates or faces.

Collisions recorded: 9,116,625; 1979 to 2025
Casualties: 12,102,133; 158,807 people killed
Accident hotspots: 12,033; 2001 to 2025
Live closure refresh: 5 minutes

Crash, area, road and closure pages

Each crash page gives the date and time, the location on a map, the road, junction, light, weather and surface conditions, every vehicle with its make and model, every casualty, and the six nearest collisions.

Each council area, road, town, postcode district and accident hotspot page starts with its totals, its fatal and serious collisions and the change on the year before, followed by charts, a map and its most recent crashes. Council areas also have a page for every year from 1979 to 2025, 18,447 in all.

Live road closure pages show what is closed now, roadworks in force, closures planned for the next 7 days and closures cleared in the last 72 hours, road by road and closure by closure.

Questions about any figure go through the contact form.

Where the data comes from: 5 sources

Every figure and closure on CrashStats comes from these datasets, all published under open licences.

DfT STATS19 road safety data
Department for Transport, 1979 to 2025
Every personal injury road collision on a public road that police in Great Britain recorded, with its vehicles and casualties: 9,116,625 collisions and 12,102,133 casualties. Every crash page and crash total on the site comes from it.
Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0
ONS Postcode Directory
Office for National Statistics, August 2026 edition
Every UK postcode with its location, council and ward. It supplies today’s council areas, the postcode district of the live postcode nearest each crash, and the ward, council and postcode in each hotspot’s name.
Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0, with OS, Royal Mail and GeoPlace copyright
OS Open Built Up Areas
Ordnance Survey
The outlines of the towns, cities and villages of Great Britain. A crash counts in the built-up area that contains it.
Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0 (OS OpenData)
National Highways Road and Lane Closures
National Highways, live data feed
Planned roadworks and unplanned incidents on England’s motorways and major A roads, read every 5 minutes.
Licence: National Highways data feed terms, based on the Open Government Licence
Traffic Wales incidents and roadworks
Traffic Wales, live feeds
Incidents and roadworks on Welsh motorways and trunk roads, read every 5 minutes.
Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0

How the crash figures are built

Council areas

There are 393 area pages: 351 current council areas, including Heathrow Airport, and 42 former districts abolished between 2019 and 2023.

Each collision counts in the council area that covers it today. Collisions recorded under an abolished council count in the council that replaced it, so a crash recorded in Harrogate counts towards North Yorkshire, while Harrogate keeps its own page on its old boundary for every year.

Roads

A collision counts on its first road, the road police recorded it on (at a junction, the main road). Motorways, A(M) roads, A roads and B roads with at least 30 collisions have a page: 4,923 roads.

Towns

A collision counts in the OS built-up area that contains its location. Built-up areas with at least 100 collisions have a town page: 2,851 towns and cities.

Postcode districts

A collision counts in the postcode district of the live postcode nearest its location, such as AB10: 2,813 districts. Town, postcode district and hotspot figures count every collision with a recorded location.

Accident hotspots

Hotspots use collisions from 2001 to 2025, counted on a 100 metre grid. The circle of 700 metres radius holding the most collisions becomes a hotspot, its collisions are set aside, and the search repeats until no circle holds 62 or more.

That gives 12,033 hotspots, each named after the ward, council and postcode nearest its centre.

Severity and casualties

A collision’s severity is its worst injury: fatal when someone died within 30 days, serious when someone was admitted to hospital or had an injury such as a fracture, and slight otherwise.

Fatal, serious and slight figures count collisions; casualty figures count people. The 146,175 fatal collisions from 1979 to 2025 killed 158,807 people.

Years and year-on-year change

Crash figures run from 1979 to 2025, the latest year the Department for Transport has published. Pages for all years compare 2025 with 2024; each year page compares that year with the one before.

Live road closures: refreshed every 5 minutes

Every 5 minutes CrashStats reads National Highways’ unplanned closures and its latest changes to planned roadworks, plus the Traffic Wales incidents and roadworks feeds. Once an hour it reloads every planned closure National Highways lists for the next 14 days.

Each road has its own live closures page next to its crash statistics, such as the M5 closures page and the M5 accident statistics.

Live incident: An unplanned closure, such as lanes shut after a crash or a breakdown. It stays live until the source reports it cleared.
Active roadworks: Planned works between their start and end times.
Planned: Works booked to start later. Road pages list those starting in the next 7 days.
Cleared: Closures that have ended or been cleared. They stay on road pages for 72 hours, then move to the road closure archive.

Data licences and credits

Crash data (DfT STATS19)
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
ONS Postcode Directory
Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right 2026. Contains GeoPlace data © Local Government Information House Limited copyright and database right 2026.
Road closures in England
Powered by National Highways’ Transport Data Feeds.