Bradford's serious collisions, ward by ward
1,578 people were killed or seriously injured on Bradford's roads over 2021–2025, 54 of them fatally. We mapped all 1,424 collisions to their council ward. Half of them happened in just 9 of the city's 30 wards.
The short answer
Serious road injury in Bradford is concentrated, not spread. City alone recorded 145 serious or fatal collisions in five years, more than the ten safest wards put together (269). Collisions track the road network rather than population: the A6177, A650 and A647 run through most of the worst-affected wards. And the direction of travel is better, with the city total down 3% since 2021.
Every figure here comes from the Department for Transport’s STATS19 records, the police record of injury collisions, point-matched to current ONS ward boundaries. Slight-injury collisions are excluded: this counts people killed or seriously injured (KSI). Full method.
Serious and fatal collisions by ward, 2021–2025
Darker means more people hurt. Click any ward for its numbers, and zoom in to see every individual serious (blue) and fatal (red) collision inside the ward boundary, so you can point at the exact junctions and corridors.
Five findings from 1,424 serious collisions
1. Half the city’s serious injuries happen in a quarter of its wards
9 of Bradford’s 30 wards account for half of every serious and fatal collision in the city. The five worst (City, Bowling and Barkerend, Keighley Central, Manningham, Tong) carry 479 between them, which is 34% of the total from 17% of the wards. At the other end, the 15 wards making up the safer half record 447 between them.
2. The trend is improving
Serious and fatal collisions fell from 271 in 2021 to 262 in 2025, a change of -3% across the period, peaking at 336 in 2023. Traffic volumes recovering after 2021 explain part of any rise, but not all of it on roads whose layout has not changed.
Serious and fatal collisions across Bradford, per year
2025: 262 (down 10.9% on the year before) · peak 336 in 2023 · -3.3% across the period
Axis clipped to the data range to show year-on-year movement.
3. One road runs through the problem: the A6177
Counting every ward it passes through, the A6177 accounts for 87 serious and fatal collisions across 9 separate wards. A corridor-wide approach would reach more people than any single junction scheme.
Counts the first road recorded on each collision, so collisions on unclassified roads are absent from this table but included in ward totals.
4. Volume and lethality are different problems
City records the most serious collisions in Bradford (145), but Keighley East is where a collision is most likely to kill: 3 of its 26 serious collisions were fatal, a rate of 12%, against a city average of 4%. 8 wards recorded no fatal collision at all in five years. Speed is usually what separates the two groups: outer wards see fewer collisions, at higher speeds, with worse outcomes.
5. Some wards are moving fast, in both directions
Comparing 2021 with 2025 for wards with a meaningful base, the swings are large enough to be worth asking about before they harden into a trend.
Rising fastest
- Bingley6 → 11 (+83%)
- Manningham12 → 18 (+50%)
- Great Horton9 → 13 (+44%)
- Bingley Rural7 → 10 (+43%)
- Craven6 → 8 (+33%)
Falling fastest
- Wibsey6 → 2 (-67%)
- Wharfedale6 → 2 (-67%)
- Bowling and Barkerend26 → 15 (-42%)
- Heaton5 → 3 (-40%)
- Shipley10 → 6 (-40%)
Wards with fewer than five collisions in 2021 are excluded: percentage swings on tiny numbers are noise, not signal.
Every ward, ranked
| # | Ward | KSI collisions | People KSI | Fatal | Main roads involved |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | City | 145 | 160 | 4 | A6181 (28), A6177 (20), A647 (11) |
| 2 | Bowling and Barkerend | 114 | 125 | 6 | A650 (25), A647 (13), A6177 (10) |
| 3 | Keighley Central | 83 | 91 | 4 | A629 (31), A6035 (9), B6143 (5) |
| 4 | Manningham | 70 | 74 | 1 | A650 (15), A6177 (10), B6144 (6) |
| 5 | Tong | 67 | 70 | — | A6177 (12), A650 (10), M606 (1) |
| 6 | Bolton and Undercliffe | 61 | 75 | 1 | A6177 (9), A6037 (9), A6176 (6) |
| 7 | Little Horton | 61 | 66 | 3 | A641 (11), A6177 (2), A647 (2) |
| 8 | Bradford Moor | 60 | 65 | 3 | A647 (18), A6177 (9), B6381 (4) |
| 9 | Great Horton | 57 | 63 | 2 | A647 (10), A6177 (9) |
| 10 | Eccleshill | 48 | 51 | 2 | A658 (12), A6176 (3), A657 (2) |
| 11 | Bingley Rural | 47 | 51 | — | A629 (14), B6144 (6), B6146 (4) |
| 12 | Heaton | 43 | 52 | — | A650 (12), B6144 (9), B6269 (3) |
| 13 | Thornton and Allerton | 41 | 49 | 1 | B6145 (10), B6144 (2), A644 (1) |
| 14 | Shipley | 40 | 42 | 2 | A650 (9), A6038 (6), A657 (5) |
| 15 | Bingley | 40 | 48 | — | B6265 (6), B6429 (4), A650 (3) |
| 16 | Craven | 39 | 47 | 3 | B6265 (7), A6034 (6), A65 (4) |
| 17 | Clayton and Fairweather Green | 36 | 43 | 2 | B6145 (9) |
| 18 | Wyke | 35 | 37 | — | A641 (9), B6379 (8), M606 (5) |
| 19 | Wibsey | 35 | 36 | 2 | B6380 (6), A6177 (6), A641 (4) |
| 20 | Baildon | 33 | 41 | 3 | A6038 (10), B6151 (7) |
| 21 | Queensbury | 31 | 35 | 2 | A647 (13), A644 (5), B6380 (2) |
| 22 | Keighley West | 31 | 33 | 2 | B6143 (4), A629 (1) |
| 23 | Royds | 31 | 34 | — | A6036 (6), B6147 (2), A641 (2) |
| 24 | Toller | 29 | 30 | — | B6144 (4), B6145 (1) |
| 25 | Worth Valley | 29 | 32 | 3 | A6033 (10), B6141 (3), A629 (2) |
| 26 | Keighley East | 26 | 29 | 3 | A650 (5), B6265 (4), A629 (3) |
| 27 | Windhill and Wrose | 25 | 27 | 1 | A6037 (4), A657 (3), B6149 (2) |
| 28 | Wharfedale | 25 | 26 | 2 | A65 (12) |
| 29 | Idle and Thackley | 23 | 24 | 2 | A658 (9), A657 (3) |
| 30 | Ilkley | 19 | 22 | — | A65 (11), B6382 (2) |
Taking this to your ward councillor
These are the same records councils and road safety teams work from. Cite as “Analysis by Swift Assist (swiftassistuk.co.uk) of DfT STATS19 data, 2021–2025” with a link to this page. The CSV above carries every ward’s numbers for a briefing note.
Lines you can quote directly
- “1,578 people were killed or seriously injured on Bradford's roads between 2021 and 2025, in 1,424 collisions recorded by police.
- “Half of those collisions happened in 9 of the city's 30 wards.
- “City is the worst-affected ward, with 145 serious or fatal collisions and 160 people hurt.
- “The A6177 accounts for 87 serious and fatal collisions across 9 wards, more than any other road in the city.
Need something more specific — a single junction’s history, pedestrian or cyclist casualties only, a printable one-pager for a ward meeting? Email the data desk. Ward-level requests from community groups are free.
Method: fatal and serious collisions (2021–2025) point-matched to ward polygons; casualty counts from the DfT casualty file. Collisions without valid coordinates excluded. Full methodology.
Related on Swift Assist
Need this data for your own work?
Site and junction reports from £95, next working day. Free for community groups, campaigners and journalists.