When Are Pedestrians Most at Risk on UK Roads? Hour, Month and Speed Data (2021–2025)

Quick answer: In Great Britain, pedestrians are hit most often between 3pm and 4pm, when 10,627 collisions injuring a pedestrian were recorded from 2021 to 2025, far more than in any other hour. But night is when they are most likely to be killed: the hours between 6pm and 6am accounted for 27.9% of pedestrian collisions but 49% of the fatal ones, and a pedestrian collision at 5am was more than ten times as likely to be fatal as one at 3pm. November is the worst month and speed decides the outcome: 0.96% of pedestrian collisions on 20 mph roads were fatal, against 6.2% at 40 mph. These figures come from 90,715 police-reported collisions that injured at least one pedestrian, in the Department for Transport's STATS19 data.

How many pedestrians are hurt

Pedestrians made up 14.5% of all road casualties in Great Britain over the five years, about 94,400 people. The yearly count was 16,654 in 2021, then between 19,176 and 19,978 in each year from 2022 to 2025, with 2025 the highest. The low 2021 figure partly reflects the lockdown restrictions in force early that year.

The hours when pedestrians are hit

• Early morning (midnight to 6am): the quietest hours, with 368 collisions in the 4am hour at the low point
• 8am: a school-run and commuting peak of 7,292 collisions
• 3pm: the highest hour of the day, with 10,627 collisions, as schools finish
• 4pm and 5pm: 8,221 and 8,106 collisions
• After 7pm: a steady fall through the evening

The afternoon peak is sharper for pedestrians than for traffic as a whole, where the busiest hour is 5pm (see what time of day most road accidents happen).

Why night is deadlier for people on foot

The share of pedestrian collisions that were fatal changes dramatically through the day:

• 3pm: 0.8% fatal, the lowest of the day
• 8am: 0.9% fatal
• 10pm: 5.2% fatal
• Midnight: 7.5% fatal
• 5am: 11.0% fatal, the highest

Across all hours 2.1% of pedestrian collisions were fatal. Between 6pm and 6am the figure was 3.7%, about two and a half times the daytime rate of 1.5%. Darkness makes pedestrians harder to see, traffic moves faster on emptier roads, and alcohol, among drivers and pedestrians, is more common late at night. Light or reflective clothing and crossing where there is street lighting both help.

Days and months

Friday recorded the most pedestrian collisions (15,808) and the most fatal ones (328); Sunday recorded the fewest (7,840). By month, the pattern follows the daylight:

• November: 9,722 collisions, about 65 a day, the worst month
• December: 9,054
• October: 8,386
• August: 5,921, about 38 a day, the quietest month

The rise from October to November coincides with the clocks going back, when the evening rush and the walk home from school move into darkness.

Speed decides whether a pedestrian survives

Two in three pedestrian collisions (67.4%) happened on 30 mph roads and a quarter (25.4%) on 20 mph roads. The chance that a collision was fatal rises steeply with the limit:

• 20 mph: 0.96% fatal
• 30 mph: 1.6% fatal
• 40 mph: 6.2% fatal
• 50 mph: 13.0% fatal
• 60 mph: 11.1% fatal
• 70 mph: 41% fatal, from 560 collisions on motorways and fast dual carriageways

That is why many towns are moving residential streets to 20 mph. The physics of crash survival explains the reason, and the stopping distance calculator shows how much further a car travels before it stops at each speed.

Where pedestrians are hurt most

Cities with large populations and busy centres record the most pedestrian casualties: Birmingham (2,948), Leeds (1,648), Liverpool (1,590), Westminster (1,534), Bradford (1,477), Croydon (1,002), Sheffield (988) and Nottingham (955). See each council's figures on its own page, such as Birmingham or Liverpool, and map every collision on the historical accident hotspots explorer, where the road-user filter can be set to pedestrians. For the council rankings overall, see which UK council has the most road accidents.

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 90,715 collisions used here are those with at least one pedestrian casualty and a recorded location. A collision is counted as fatal when anyone involved died within 30 days; the data used here does not say which road user died, so fatal shares describe the collision rather than the pedestrian alone. For every council's figures, see UK road accidents by local authority.