12th February 2026
Last month, the Evening Standard reported Almost 630 drivers who caused fatal crashes have avoided jail in past five years. They did not give any breakdown as to which offences had non-custodial sentences nor any information about disqualifications but did highlight how many drivers had not gone to prison.
Is it fair to say drivers avoided jail if their culpability did not justify imprisonment? And is jail the only outcome that matters? AVZ does not think so.
Two offences — Causing Death by Dangerous Driving and Causing Death by Careless Driving account for 90% of all Causing Death by Driving convictions. These have very different sentencing outcomes.
Causing Death by Dangerous Driving (CDDD)
With a custodial sentence as the starting point in the Sentencing Guideline, prison will be the norm. Of the 816 drivers convicted for CDDD in the last five years, 5% (37) did not go to prison. These exceptions could be due to them being seriously injured in the crash, too old/ill for prison or they might have killed a family member, or other mitigating factors.
Causing Death by Careless Driving (CDCD)
The vast majority of non-custodial sentences given were for CDCD (91%). The Sentencing Guidelines for this offence include community sentences and short custodial sentences (two years and under) that can be suspended. Examples of careless driving includes “momentary lapses of inattention” and “brief but avoidable distraction”.
The most common sentence for CDCD is a suspended sentence (67%). Only one in four of convictions result in prison. AVZ analyses the criminal justice statistics on causing death and serious injury by driving and more information on sentencing outcomes can be seen there.
The future is expected to hold even less jail for drivers. The Sentencing Act 2026 includes a presumption against short sentences (12 months and under). This will affect almost half of custodial sentences given for CDCD as 46% are for 12 months or under.
Outcomes for drivers
But is jail for drivers the only outcome we should be concerned about? This made us think about the other outcomes. So we analysed DfT casualty stats and MoJ criminal justice stats for the past five years. This showed drivers in fatal crashes are much more likely to die than be prosecuted, let alone imprisoned, for causing it.
AVZ has produced a summary sheet with the basic data on driver outcomes in fatal crashes in England and Wales.
In 2024, a driver in a fatal crash was:
- over two times more likely to die than be convicted for causing it,
- over three times more likely to die than be imprisoned for it.
- almost four times more likely to die than be banned for five years or more (but less than life).
Download our summary sheet here
Death was the most likely outcome for drivers. Long sentences were very rare with drivers 14 times more likely to die than be jailed for nine years or longer. Lifetime bans were almost never given with drivers over 432 times more likely to die than face a lifetime ban.
This is across England and Wales. It will be very different in urban areas where drivers are much more likely to survive fatal crashes with vulnerable road users the most likely fatalities.
Justice outcomes for victims
And what about the justice outcomes for victims? How often is a driver prosecuted, convicted or imprisoned for killing a pedestrian or a cyclist or a motorcyclist or a car occupant? This data is not reported. Not at the national level and not at the local level. No police service is known to publish these statistics. They may produce occasional press releases, but it is not possible to compare between modes or over time to see for instance, how likely it is for a fatal pedestrian crash at nighttime to result in a conviction.
This is why the recent All Party Parliamentary Cycling and Walking Group’s report on Sentencing after fatal crashes had to rely on media reports and police press releases. And why AVZ called for data linkage between collision reports and court records so it would be possible to monitor the justice outcomes of collision investigations
AVZ does not believe this lack of transparency happens with any other police investigation—at least not into death or serious injury. So why do we tolerate it with collision investigations?
This blog and associated briefing was written by Amy Aeron-Thomas, AVZ’s Traffic Justice Coordinator. She previously worked as Advocacy and Justice Manager for RoadPeace, the national charity for road traffic victims (now closed). Her work included producing annual reports on the number of prosecutions and convictions and sentencing outcomes for Causing Death by Driving. These were stopped after she left in 2019.
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