Ice and Snow Road Accidents in the UK: When and Where

Quick answer: In Great Britain, police recorded 7,925 injury collisions on icy or snowy roads from 2021 to 2025, about 1,600 a year, according to the Department for Transport's STATS19 road safety data. January is by far the worst month (44% of them), and the most dangerous hour is 8am to 9am, when overnight frost has not yet thawed. Surprisingly, a collision on ice is slightly less likely to be fatal than one on a dry road (1.2% against 1.4%), because drivers slow down. The deadliest surface is a flooded road: 2.8% of collisions on flooded roads were fatal, twice the rate on dry roads.

Collisions by road surface (Great Britain, 2021–2025)

Police-reported injury collisions, and the share that were fatal:

• Dry: 374,268 collisions (73% of all), 1.42% fatal
• Wet or damp: 120,572 (23%), 1.75% fatal
• Frost or ice: 6,668 (1.3%), 1.18% fatal
• Snow: 1,257 (0.2%), 1.11% fatal
• Flood over 3cm deep: 788 (0.2%), 2.79% fatal

Wet roads are the bigger danger overall: one in four injury collisions happens on a wet or damp surface, and each is more likely to be fatal than one on a dry road. Icy and snowy roads cause far fewer collisions in total simply because there are few icy days in most of Britain each year.

When icy-road collisions happen

By month: January recorded 3,492 of the 7,925 icy or snowy collisions (44%), followed by December (2,034), November (1,012), February (837) and March (385). There were almost none from May to September.

By hour: the peak is the morning commute, before the sun has melted the overnight frost. 8am to 9am had the most (1,163), and 7am to 9am together accounted for 26% of all icy-road collisions. A second, smaller rise comes in the early evening as temperatures drop again.

By year: 2022 had the most (1,958), followed by 2023 (1,702), 2021 (1,684), 2025 (1,407) and 2024 (1,174). The difference is mostly the weather: a cold January or a snowy December changes the total far more than anything drivers do.

Where icy-road collisions happen

56% were on rural roads, where many minor roads and country lanes are not gritted. By speed limit, most were on 30 mph roads (3,344) and 60 mph roads (2,319), the national speed limit on single-carriageway country roads.

By council, 2021–2025: Birmingham (130), Leeds (119), Wiltshire (108), Bradford (105), Cornwall (97), Dorset (96), Cheshire East (84), West Northamptonshire (80), East Riding of Yorkshire (77), Highland (73) and North Yorkshire (73). These are large council areas with many miles of road, so the list reflects size as well as climate. Every council's full collision figures are on the UK road accidents pages.

Why ice is less deadly per crash, and still dangerous

On ice and snow, most drivers slow down, so the collisions that happen are more often low-speed slides into kerbs, junctions and other cars. That is why the share of fatal collisions is lower than on dry roads. It does not make icy roads safe: the chance of a collision on any given journey rises sharply, and the data cannot measure that because nobody records how much traffic was on the road each icy morning. The Highway Code warns that stopping distances can be up to ten times longer on ice than on a dry road. Work out your own with the stopping distance calculator.

Driving on icy roads: what helps

• Clear all the ice and snow from the windows, mirrors, lights and roof before you set off.
• Leave up to ten times the normal gap to the vehicle in front.
• Pull away gently in second gear, brake early and lightly, and steer smoothly.
• Take extra care on bridges, shaded stretches and untreated side roads, which freeze first and thaw last.
• If you can, delay a journey on a frosty morning until mid-morning, after the 7am–9am peak.

How these numbers were counted

All figures are from the Department for Transport's STATS19 data for 2021 to 2025 (police-reported personal injury collisions in Great Britain, Open Government Licence). Road surface is as recorded by the police officer at the scene; "icy or snowy" combines the "frost or ice" and "snow" categories. Northern Ireland is not included. Collisions where nobody was injured are not recorded, and the most recent year can be revised. More UK data: clocks going back and pedestrian accidents, the accident hotspots map and the UK drink-drive limit.