What Time of Day Do Most Road Accidents Happen? UK Hour-by-Hour Data (2021–2025)

Quick answer: In Great Britain, the hour with the most road collisions is 5pm to 6pm, when 44,786 injury collisions were recorded between 2021 and 2025, closely followed by 4pm (42,895) and 3pm (42,205). Friday has the most collisions (85,307) and Sunday the fewest (57,776). But the busiest time is not the deadliest: a collision at 4am was about five times more likely to be fatal than one at 8am (4.1% against 0.8%), and the hours between 10pm and 6am produced 10.7% of collisions but 21.9% of fatal ones. These figures come from 513,748 police-reported injury collisions in the Department for Transport's STATS19 data.

Collisions by hour of day

• Midnight to 5am: the quietest period, bottoming out at 3,138 collisions in the 4am hour
• 7am to 9am: a sharp morning peak, reaching 32,854 in the 8am hour
• 10am to 2pm: between 22,500 and 33,000 an hour, rising through the afternoon
• 3pm to 6pm: the daily high, peaking at 44,786 in the 5pm hour
• 7pm onwards: a gradual fall, to 11,304 in the 11pm hour

The shape follows traffic. More vehicles on the road means more recorded collisions, which is why the evening rush, when commuting, school pick-ups and errands overlap, is the busiest time of all.

The single busiest time of the week

Combining day and hour, Friday between 3pm and 4pm was the busiest slot of the week, with 7,670 collisions. On weekday mornings the 8am hour recorded between 5,423 and 6,310 collisions each weekday, but only 1,912 on Saturdays and 1,224 on Sundays, when there is no commute. By day of the week:

• Monday: 70,671
• Tuesday: 74,820
• Wednesday: 76,663
• Thursday: 77,939
• Friday: 85,307
• Saturday: 70,572
• Sunday: 57,776

For the deadliest days by country across Europe and North America, see the deadliest day of the week to drive.

Night crashes are fewer but deadlier

The share of collisions that were fatal rises steeply after dark:

• 8am: 0.8% fatal, the lowest of the day
• 5pm: 1.1% fatal
• 10pm: 2.4% fatal
• 1am: 3.2% fatal
• 4am: 4.1% fatal, the highest of the day

Overall, 3.0% of collisions between 10pm and 6am were fatal, against 1.3% during the rest of the day. Emptier roads allow higher speeds, and darkness, fatigue and alcohol are more common at night. In absolute numbers the most fatal collisions still happened in the afternoon peak (480 in the 5pm hour), simply because so many more vehicles are moving then.

By day of the week, Saturday (1,233) and Friday (1,231) recorded the most fatal collisions, and Tuesday the fewest (934), consistent with more leisure driving and late-night trips at the weekend.

Pedestrians are most at risk after school

Pedestrian casualties follow their own pattern. The 3pm hour recorded 11,078 pedestrian casualties, far more than any other hour and more than the evening rush at 5pm (8,394). The morning peak at 8am recorded 7,581. Both peaks line up with the start and end of the school day, when children are walking near busy roads.

Month by month

November recorded the most collisions (46,825), followed by June (46,503) and October (45,868). February recorded the fewest (35,177), partly because it is shorter, but it was also the quietest month per day. November is also the first full month of darker evenings after the clocks go back in late October. Country-level monthly patterns are on the deadliest month for driving page.

Speed limits change the odds

Most collisions happen on urban roads: 30 mph roads carried 267,299 of them, just over half. But the chance that a collision was fatal rises with the limit: 0.5% on 20 mph roads, 0.9% at 30 mph, 1.8% at 40 mph, 2.9% at 50 mph and 3.8% on 60 mph roads. Motorways and 70 mph dual carriageways were slightly lower, at 3.4%. See how braking distance grows with speed on the stopping distance calculator.

What this means for your journeys

• The evening rush, especially on Friday afternoons, is when you are most likely to be in a collision.
• Late-night and early-morning driving is when a collision is most likely to be fatal, so take breaks and never drive tired or after drinking.
• Around 3pm near schools, expect children crossing and slow down.

To see where collisions cluster near you, open the historical accident hotspots map or check a whole journey with the route accident history tool.

How these numbers were counted

The data is the Department for Transport's road safety open data (STATS19) for 2021 to 2025, published under the Open Government Licence, covering personal-injury collisions reported to police in England, Scotland and Wales. The 513,748 collisions used here are all those with a recorded location; 53 without one are excluded. Times are the local time recorded by police. These are counts of collisions, not rates per mile driven, so a busy hour records more collisions partly because more people are on the road. For figures by council see UK road accidents by local authority, and for all of the United Kingdom see the UK country page.