Road deaths up seven per cent in 2021

• Road deaths increased by seven per cent in 2021 compared to 2020, according to a new DfT report 
• Preventing collisions in 2021 could have saved around £30 billion, road safety charity estimates
• A quarter of car occupant fatalities in recent years were not wearing seatbelts

Road deaths increased by seven per cent in 2021 compared to the previous year, with an estimated 1,558 fatalities on UK roads, according to the latest Department for Transport (DfT) statistics. 

The number of people killed or seriously injured (KSI) reached 27,450, a 14 per cent compared to 2020, while there were an estimated 128,209 casualties of all severities, an 11 per cent increase compared with 2020 when traffic levels were down substantially because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Compared to pre-pandemic (2019) levels, road deaths were down 11 per cent, KSI casualties were down 11 per cent and casualties of all severities were 16 per cent below the 2019 level.

­Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “While the headline reduction in death and injury on the roads is welcome the waters are still muddied by the impact of Covid and the damping effect it had on traffic volume. The worry must be that traffic returns to pre-pandemic levels resulting in casualty numbers and casualty risk also rising and remaining stubbornly high."

Preventing collisions could save around £30 billion

Road safety charity Brake estimates the value of preventing the collisions in 2021 was around £30 billion, including huge costs to the NHS and emergency services.

It noted that a quarter of car occupant fatalities in recent years were not wearing seatbelts, "demonstrating the vital importance of belting up".

Mary Williams, chief executive of Brake, urged the Government to "put road safety at the heart of its infrastructure plans, set targets for reducing the carnage, urgently implement policies and funding for safe vehicle use and road safety infrastructure in our towns and between places, and help provide devastated families with the support they need". 

Gooding believes there are signs the Government is "serious" about improving road safety as the Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng announced in his growth plan that he would accelerate 45 safer road schemes to improve road infrastructure. This is in addition to the DfT's commitment to establish a Road Collision Investigation Branch, which the RAC Foundation helped pilot.