UK motorcycle deaths increase 8 percent
Government statistics find that ‘a person is more likely to be injured… when travelling by motorcycle.’
Some 340 motorcyclists were killed on UK roads last year, according to the latest government statistics - representing an 8-percent jump over 2023.
Statistics from the Department for Transport show that motorcyclists now account for 21 percent of all road fatalities. Meanwhile, according to the government’s THINK! Road safety campaign, motorcyclists only account for 1 percent of total UK road traffic.
As a DfT report on the statistics observes: “the highest casualty rates per billion miles travelled were for motorcyclists, indicating that a person is more likely to be injured on the road when travelling by motorcycle than for other modes.”
Car deaths fell to 692 fatalities in 2024 - an 8-percent drop over the previous year. That’s in line with a long, steady decline in car-related deaths over the past two decades.
Motorcyclist deaths have also dropped over that time (some 585 bikers were killed on UK roads in 2004), but the decline seems to have stalled over the last decade or so, with yearly totals ranging between 320 and 350 ever since 2011 (with 2020 being a slight exception since many people weren’t riding that year).
Ironically, although there were a higher number of motorcycle road fatalities last year, the overall number of reported casualties (ie, any injury that isn’t death) fell - from 16,978 in 2023 to 15,960 in 2024.
In total - looping in cars, HGVs, buses, LGVs, motorcycles, pedestrians, and bicycles - there were 1,602 fatalities on UK roads in 2024. Again, that’s a considerable drop from two decades ago. In 2004, some 3,221 people lost their lives on British roads. At the time, that was considered a success - the lowest number of fatalities in 78 years.
In news that will come as no surprise to our worried mothers, the overwhelming majority of the people killed in road accidents last year were male - a whopping 75 percent. Though, no one age group really stands out over another.
In fact, the age group where you might expect to see the highest number of deaths - men under the age of 30 - saw a decrease in fatalities. Down 4 percent from 2023, and down a stunning 27 percent from 2014. Score a win for Gen Z in terms of safety consciousness.
Lastly, the statistics show that the majority of road fatalities - 60 percent - occurred on rural roads. The safest place to be, it seems, is on a motorway - where just 5 percent of deaths occurred.
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Chris Cope is a fourth-generation journalist, originally from Texas. He has lived in the UK for roughly two decades and has been writing about motorcycles for most of that time. He has written for dozens of publications and websites in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia.
