Westminster named UK's most dangerous area for pedestrians, study finds

New research has identified the City of Westminster as the most dangerous area in the United Kingdom for pedestrians, finding that almost a quarter of road collisions there involve people on foot.

Personal injury specialists at claims.co.uk analysed road-collision data from 2014 through 2023 and calculated annual averages to determine the share of collisions that involved pedestrians. Westminster recorded an average of 1,036 collisions each year, 242 of which involved pedestrians, representing 23.4 percent of all reported collisions in the borough.

Glasgow ranked second in the analysis, with pedestrian incidents accounting for 21.1 percent of the city’s collisions. Aberdeen placed third, with nearly 22 percent of its relatively low annual total of 111 collisions involving pedestrians; 24 collisions a year on average involved people on foot in the northeastern city. Camden in north-west London and Oldham in Greater Manchester filled fourth and fifth places respectively, with pedestrian shares of about 21.3 percent in each area.

The research highlighted that urban and high-footfall areas showed markedly higher shares of pedestrian-involved collisions than many rural or suburban counties. Westminster, which attracts roughly 25 million visitors a year to landmarks such as Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, illustrates how heavy pedestrian volumes coincide with a higher proportion of collisions involving people walking.

A spokesperson for claims.co.uk said: "These numbers really show how different pedestrian safety can be depending on where you are. In busy city centres it's expected that more people on foot will mean more incidents, but in some places the share involving pedestrians is worryingly high. In fact, someone walking in Westminster is almost five times more likely to be involved in a collision than in East Riding of Yorkshire. That kind of gap really highlights the need for targeted road safety measures in the areas where people are most at risk."

Other areas that featured in the top 10 most dangerous list included Liverpool, Bolton, Manchester, Harrow and Rochdale. The study measured danger by the proportion of total collisions that involved pedestrians rather than by the absolute number of incidents alone, a method intended to capture relative pedestrian risk in different jurisdictions.

At the lower end of the scale, the East Riding of Yorkshire emerged as the safest area for pedestrians in the analysis, with just 25 pedestrian-involved collisions out of an average 474 total collisions annually, or about 5.17 percent. Central Bedfordshire and Wiltshire followed with pedestrian shares of roughly 5.68 percent and 6.12 percent respectively.

Traffic safety experts and local officials have long pointed to a combination of factors that influence pedestrian risk, including traffic volumes, vehicle speeds, road design, crossing provision and enforcement of traffic laws. The claims.co.uk analysis does not attribute cause beyond the geographic distribution of collisions and recommends targeted measures in higher-risk areas.

The findings add to ongoing debates in cities about how to balance traffic flow, tourism and pedestrian safety, and come as many local authorities across the UK consider interventions such as lower speed limits, redesigned junctions and expanded pedestrian zones to reduce collisions involving people on foot.