AVZ Briefing – Britain’s Urban rural divide: who’s getting hurt where

19th February 2026

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Key points

Almost all road safety strategies have Killed and Seriously Injured (KSI) casualty reduction targets, with no priority allocated to road deaths. This includes DfT’s new Road Safety Strategy which aims to reduce KSIs in England and Wales by 65% by 2035.
Urban areas account for most KSIs (57%) whilst road deaths occur more in rural areas (60%).
This should affect the priorities and actions in a road safety strategy and lead to a focus on reducing urban serious injuries.

Killed/seriously injured (KSIs) and urban focus (Table 1 and Figure 1 below)

Over 40% more KSIs occur in urban areas (57%) than rural areas (40%).
This is due to the majority of vulnerable road user KSIs occurring in urban areas, including 86% of pedestrian KSIs and 78% of cyclist KSIs.
A minority of motor vehicle occupant KSIs occur in urban areas, including 35% of car occupant KSIs and 25% of van occupant KSIs.
Serious injuries dominate, especially in urban areas where there are 30 serious injuries (SIs) to every urban road death, compared to 12 SIs for every rural road death.

Table 1: Reported fatal and serious road casualties, Britain (2024)

Fatalities and rural focus (Table 2)

Almost twice as many people are killed in rural areas (60%) than urban areas (35%).
Cyclist deaths are divided equally between rural areas (51%) and rural areas (49%)
Fewer than one in three pedestrian deaths occur in rural areas (28%).

Table 2: Reported road deaths (2024)