County council · England

Road risk in Surrey

Surrey ranks 100 of 192 British highway authorities on our road risk score. Here is what the official record shows, and how it compares.

Below averageRisk score 49.4/100ONS code E10000030

Police recorded 2,496 injury collisions in Surrey in 2025, hurting 3,179 people, of whom 660 were killed or seriously injured and 29 were killed. Set against the traffic its roads actually carry, that is 84.8 killed or seriously injured per billion vehicle miles, 5% above the median ranked authority (80.5).

Collisions: 2,496 in 2025
People hurt: 3,179 casualties
Killed or seriously injured: 660
Killed: 29
KSI per billion vehicle miles: 84.8 (median 80.5)
KSI, three-year average: 669.1 a year
Severity-adjusted KSI, 2025: 723 (recorded: 660)
Severity-adjusted KSI, three-year average: 721.2 a year (recorded: 669.1)
KSI per 100,000 residents: 52.6 — rank 23
Population: 1,255,255
Risk score: 49.4/100 — rank 100 of 192

Compiled by Stephen Hall, Data lead, Swift Assist. Source: DfT STATS19 and DfT road traffic estimates (2025), OGL v3. Updated 2026-10-08.

Direction of travel

Five years of collisions in Surrey

Across 2021–2025, recorded collisions were broadly flat, with 2022 the worst year of the period at 2,783 collisions.

Collisions per year in Surrey

2025: 2,496 (up 1.7% on the year before) · peak 2,783 in 2022 · +0.6% across the period

Axis clipped to the data range to show year-on-year movement.

Two ways of measuring

Surrey looks less dangerous per mile driven than per resident

Divide casualties by the people who live here and Surrey ranks 23. Divide by the miles actually driven on its roads and it ranks 100 — a difference of 77 places.

That gap runs the other way: relative to the traffic its roads carry, Surrey does less harm than its casualty count per resident implies. Places with heavy local travel and few through routes tend to look worse per head than the volume of driving warrants. Neither number is the true one. Which you should use depends on whether you are asking how safe it is to live somewhere or how safe it is to drive there.

Who is being hurt

Pedestrians, cyclists and riders in Surrey

These are the road users with the least protection when something goes wrong, and they carry a disproportionate share of the serious injuries. Across 2,496 collisions in Surrey, the three groups appear 1,082 times between them — an involvement rate of 43.3%.

Road user	Collisions	Share of all collisions
Pedestrians	338	13.5%
Cyclists	333	13.3%
Motorcyclists	411	16.5%

A single collision can involve more than one of these groups and is then counted in each row, so the rows do not add up to a share of the total.

Darkness, weather and the time of year

When collisions happen in Surrey

DfT records the light level and road surface at every collision, but publishes neither below national level. These are Surrey’s own shares over 7,690 collisions, with the national figure beside each one for comparison.

Share of collisions	Surrey	National	How it reads
In darknessAny collision where the officer recorded darkness, lit or unlit.	29%	28.7%	close to the national figure
In darkness, no street lightingThe rural lighting picture rather than the urban speeding one.	9%	6.3%	well above the national figure
On a wet road surfaceWet, damp or standing water at the scene.	28.3%	24.5%	above the national figure
On snow or iceRare everywhere, and concentrated in a handful of authorities.	1.9%	1.4%	well above the national figure

On the darkness share, Surrey ranks 70 of 192 authorities, counting from the highest.

The winter effect. Collisions in Surrey run 2.4% lower from November to January than from May to July — against 4.5% lower nationally. That is 1,979 collisions against 2,027.

What this does not tell you

A share is not a rate. A high darkness share means darkness accounts for more of Surrey’s collisions — not that its roads are more dangerous overall. Read it alongside the casualties-per-mile-driven figure above.
Condition is recorded, not tested. The officer records the surface and light level at the scene. It is an observation, not a measurement, and it is not a finding that the condition caused the collision.
Exposure is not controlled for. Fewer people travel at 3am than at 3pm, so a collision in darkness is drawn from a smaller pool of journeys. Without hourly traffic counts, these shares describe when collisions happen rather than how risky an hour is.

Every authority compared on the same measures: winter road risk across Britain.

Inside the county

Where the casualties fall across Surrey’s districts

Surrey is the highway authority, but the collisions are spread unevenly across the 11 districts within it.

District	Collisions	Casualties	KSI
Guildford	337	419	106
Reigate and Banstead	300	411	68
Elmbridge	264	327	72
Tandridge	261	362	61
Mole Valley	247	299	75
Spelthorne	214	251	52
Runnymede	213	279	50
Waverley	198	257	58
Woking	192	229	51
Surrey Heath	143	187	39
Epsom and Ewell	127	158	28

Benchmark

Surrey against similar authorities

ONS does name statistical neighbours for Surrey, but most of them are lower-tier districts that we do not publish as authority pages — they are not highway authorities, so their road figures belong to the county above them. Rather than compare against pages that do not exist, these are the authorities nearest to Surrey in the national table. That is a weaker comparison and we would rather say so than imply a like-for-like match we cannot actually make. Within this group Surrey is 9 of 21 on casualties per mile driven, against a group median of 78.8.

Authority	KSI / bn miles	Score	National rank
Kingston upon Thames	101.8	49.8	98
North Ayrshire	88.2	49.1	102
Surrey (this page)	84.8	49.4	100
Wiltshire	76.6	50.6	96
City of Edinburgh	76.6	49.1	101
Coventry	75.8	48.8	103
Plymouth	73.1	49.7	99
Peterborough	69.8	50.5	97
North Tyneside	60.8	48.6	104

National position

Surrey against its closest comparators

Surrey sits 100 of 192 nationally, and 86 of 148 within England. These are the authorities nearest to it in the table.

#	Authority	Score	KSI / bn miles
98	Kingston upon Thames	49.8	101.8
99	Plymouth	49.7	73.1
100	Surrey (this page)	49.4	84.8
101	City of Edinburgh	49.1	76.6
102	North Ayrshire	49.1	88.2

See all 192 authorities →

Common questions

Road risk in Surrey, answered

How dangerous are the roads in Surrey?

In the latest official DfT figures, 2,496 road collisions in Surrey injured or killed 3,179 people, 660 of them killed or seriously injured. Measured against the traffic its roads actually carry, that is 84.8 people killed or seriously injured per billion vehicle miles, against a median of 80.5 across the ranked authorities — placing Surrey 100 of 192 authorities on our combined score, where 1 is the highest risk. The score weighs that rate alongside who is being hurt, the five-year trend and how often a serious collision proves fatal, so the rank is not the rate alone.

Are road casualties in Surrey rising or falling?

Across 2021–2025, recorded collisions in Surrey were broadly flat, with 2022 the worst year of the period at 2,783 collisions. Year-to-year movement in a single authority is noisy, so the five-year direction carries more than any single year's change.

Who is being hurt on Surrey's roads?

In Surrey there were 338 collisions involving pedestrians, 333 involving cyclists and 411 involving motorcyclists, out of 2,496 in total. Added together that is an involvement rate of 43.3%, though a collision involving two of those groups is counted in both figures, so it is a comparable index rather than a clean share.

Who is responsible for road safety in Surrey?

Surrey is a county council, and is the highway authority for its own roads. That means it sets local speed limits, designs junctions and crossings, and decides safety scheme spending. Motorways and most trunk roads are managed separately by National Highways in England, Transport Scotland, or the Welsh Government, so the worst road in an area is often not the council's to change. Enforcement sits with the local police force.

Where does this data come from?

DfT STATS19, the record police complete at the scene of every injury collision, published annually under the Open Government Licence, combined with DfT's own road traffic estimates for the mileage denominator. Collision, casualty and KSI counts on this page are for 2025; only the trend compares 2021–2025. STATS19 counts collisions police attended and recorded, so collisions never reported do not appear, and under-reporting is known to be worst for cyclists and for slight injuries.

What this means for you

What actually changes the odds in Surrey

Data is only useful if it changes what you do. These three are picked from Surrey’s own figures above, each with the number that prompted it. Every guide explains how the thing works before it suggests buying anything, and most cost less than a third of a typical insurance excess.

Alarmed disc lock

£20–£50

Motorcyclists are in 16% of Surrey's collisions, and bikes are also lifted rather than ridden away. An alarmed disc lock covers the theft half for about £30.

How it works →

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