National Highways misses safety target despite lowest casualty rate since Covid
31 July 2026
2025 road casualty data
In RP2, the UK government set National Highways a target to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured (KSIs) on England’s strategic road network (SRN) by 50% by the end of 2025, compared to the 2005-2009 average baseline. This target also covered the interim period that ran from April 2025 to March 2026. Following the Department for Transport’s (DfT’s) publication of road casualty statistics for 2025, we are now able to report the company’s final performance against this target.
In our safety report of December 2023, we required National Highways to develop a plan setting out what additional actions it would take to close the gap to its target. The company finalised the plan in March 2024 and implemented it over the remainder of RP2. It also delivered further actions in 2025 as part of its safety plan for the interim period. The latest statistics, published on 30 July 2026, show that these actions were not sufficient to meet the target.
The data show that there were 1,875 KSI casualties on the SRN in 2025. This is 37.5% below the baseline, which confirms that National Highways has missed its target of a 50% reduction by the end of 2025.
Chart: Number of people killed or seriously injured on the strategic road network, 2005 to 2025
Six more people were killed or seriously injured on the SRN in 2025 compared to 2024, an increase of 0.3%. In comparison, KSI casualties on all roads in Great Britain increased by 3.6%.
Over the same period, traffic on the SRN increased by 2.4% to the highest level ever recorded. As a result, the KSI casualty rate decreased in the most recent year, to 18.9 KSI casualties per billion vehicle miles (bvm) travelled. This compares to 19.3 KSI casualties per bvm travelled in 2024 and is the lowest casualty rate ever recorded on the SRN (excluding 2020, when traffic volumes were significantly lower due to the pandemic).
Our next annual safety report is due to be published in January 2027. We are now working to produce an assessment of National Highways’ performance against its RP2 safety target.
