Accident hotspots in Bedford: where crashes cluster
Police recorded 224 road collisions in Bedford in 2025. We mapped every one to find the junctions and roads where they concentrate.
Bedford’s busiest collision clusters (2025)
Each circle is a ~100m cluster of police-reported collisions. Larger circles = more collisions; red = at least one death. Click a circle for details.
The short answer
Bedford recorded 224 police-reported collisions in 2025 — falling (-3.9% on 2024), or about 209 per 100,000 residents. Its most stubborn risk is Elstow Interchange, a hotspot in 5 of the last 5 years.
224
Collisions in Bedford (2025)
279
People injured or killed
-3.9%
Change vs 2024
~242
Modelled collisions in 2026 on current trend
Bedford’s junctions that stay dangerous
These locations recorded multiple collisions in at least four of the last five years (2021–2025) — a persistent pattern, not a one-off bad year.
Elstow Interchange
A6
24 collisions across 5 hotspot years · 29 casualties · 2 serious or fatal
Prebend Street, Cauldwell
A5141
17 collisions across 4 hotspot years · 21 casualties · 5 serious or fatal
The Broadway, Harpur
A4280
11 collisions across 4 hotspot years · 12 casualties · 2 serious or fatal
Bedford’s worst accident spots
| # | Location | Road | Collisions | Casualties | Serious | Fatal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Elstow Interchange | A421 | 5 | 6 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 | A5141 | A5141 | 5 | 7 | 0 | 0 |
| 3 | Ampthill Road, Cauldwell | A600 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | London Road, Kingsbrook | A600 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 0 |
| 5 | The Embankment, Cauldwell | A600 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 0 |
What to do with this: if your regular routes cross the junctions above, they deserve extra care at peak times — these aren’t random locations, they’re where collisions repeat. For context, Bedford’s rate of 209 per 100,000 residents compares with an average of 220 across the 125 areas we track. And if you’re ever hit at one of these spots, that documented history is relevant to liability — mention it when you call.
Vulnerable road users in Bedford in 2025: 42 collisions involved a pedestrian, 43 a cyclist and 26 a motorcyclist — overall, 209.3 collisions per 100,000 residents.
Area definition: figures cover 6km radius of the town centre. Per-100k rates use the mid-2023 ONS population estimate for the named town or district; where the area is radius-defined, treat the rate as indicative.
These figures come from the Department for Transport’s STATS19 dataset — every collision reported to the police in 2025 — clustered to roughly 100 metres and labelled via OpenStreetMap. Only police-reported incidents are included, so minor damage-only bumps are undercounted. See the full UK hotspots analysis for the national picture and methodology.
Involved in an accident in Bedford that wasn’t your fault? You’re entitled to a like-for-like replacement vehicle and to claim your losses from the at-fault insurer — our step-by-step guide explains what to do, and our estimator shows what a claim can include.
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