City of Edinburgh's serious collisions, ward by ward
779 people were killed or seriously injured on City of Edinburgh's roads over 2021–2025, 28 of them fatally. We mapped all 748 collisions to their council ward. Half of them happened in just 6 of the city's 17 wards.
The short answer
Serious road injury in City of Edinburgh is concentrated, not spread. City Centre alone recorded 124 serious or fatal collisions in five years, more than the ten safest wards put together (307). Collisions track the road network rather than population: the A8, A7 and A71 run through most of the worst-affected wards. And the direction of travel is better, with the city total down 1% 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 748 serious collisions
1. Half the city’s serious injuries happen in a quarter of its wards
6 of City of Edinburgh’s 17 wards account for half of every serious and fatal collision in the city. The five worst (City Centre, Sighthill/Gorgie, Southside/Newington, Almond, Liberton/Gilmerton) carry 354 between them, which is 47% of the total from 29% of the wards. At the other end, the 8 wards making up the safer half record 228 between them.
2. The trend is improving
Serious and fatal collisions fell from 151 in 2021 to 149 in 2025, a change of -1% across the period, peaking at 168 in 2022. 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 City of Edinburgh, per year
2025: 149 (down 3.2% on the year before) · peak 168 in 2022 · -1.3% across the period
Axis clipped to the data range to show year-on-year movement.
3. One road runs through the problem: the A8
Counting every ward it passes through, the A8 accounts for 47 serious and fatal collisions across 3 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 Centre records the most serious collisions in City of Edinburgh (124), but Colinton/Fairmilehead is where a collision is most likely to kill: 2 of its 26 serious collisions were fatal, a rate of 8%, against a city average of 4%. 2 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
- Southside/Newington7 → 15 (+114%)
- Almond6 → 9 (+50%)
- Sighthill/Gorgie11 → 15 (+36%)
- Drum Brae/Gyle6 → 8 (+33%)
- Colinton/Fairmilehead6 → 7 (+17%)
Falling fastest
- Corstorphine/Murrayfield9 → 3 (-67%)
- Portobello/Craigmillar15 → 7 (-53%)
- Liberton/Gilmerton13 → 8 (-38%)
- Morningside7 → 5 (-29%)
- Craigentinny/Duddingston8 → 6 (-25%)
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 Centre | 124 | 129 | 5 | A8 (23), A7 (8), A90 (6) |
| 2 | Sighthill/Gorgie | 62 | 63 | 3 | A71 (17), A70 (5), A720 (5) |
| 3 | Southside/Newington | 60 | 64 | 2 | A7 (19), A701 (11), A700 (2) |
| 4 | Almond | 56 | 59 | 2 | A90 (6), M90 (5), B9085 (4) |
| 5 | Liberton/Gilmerton | 52 | 54 | 1 | B701 (11), A772 (9), A720 (8) |
| 6 | Portobello/Craigmillar | 45 | 45 | — | A1 (7), A6095 (7), B6415 (4) |
| 7 | Craigentinny/Duddingston | 42 | 44 | 1 | A1 (12), A1140 (4), A199 (2) |
| 8 | Inverleith | 40 | 41 | 1 | A902 (9), A90 (8), B9085 (2) |
| 9 | Pentland Hills | 39 | 40 | 2 | A70 (9), M8 (6), A71 (6) |
| 10 | Leith | 33 | 35 | — | A199 (8), A901 (6), A902 (1) |
| 11 | Forth | 33 | 35 | 1 | A901 (6), A902 (5) |
| 12 | Morningside | 30 | 31 | 1 | A702 (10), A700 (1) |
| 13 | Drum Brae/Gyle | 27 | 28 | 1 | B701 (7), A8 (7), A90 (3) |
| 14 | Corstorphine/Murrayfield | 27 | 30 | 2 | A8 (17), B701 (2) |
| 15 | Leith Walk | 27 | 27 | 2 | B900 (4), B1350 (3), A902 (1) |
| 16 | Colinton/Fairmilehead | 26 | 27 | 2 | A720 (10), B701 (4), A70 (2) |
| 17 | Fountainbridge/Craiglockhart | 25 | 27 | 2 | A70 (5), A71 (3) |
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
- “779 people were killed or seriously injured on City of Edinburgh's roads between 2021 and 2025, in 748 collisions recorded by police.
- “Half of those collisions happened in 6 of the city's 17 wards.
- “City Centre is the worst-affected ward, with 124 serious or fatal collisions and 129 people hurt.
- “The A8 accounts for 47 serious and fatal collisions across 3 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.
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