News / Transport
Complaints continue about making streets safer as deaths and injuries on roads increase
On average, a dozen people are either killed or seriously injured every month in Bristol, with cyclists making up the highest proportion of casualties.
In 2025, 142 people were killed or seriously injured, compared to 101 in 2024.
Bristol City Council is planning a range of changes to the roads to make them safer, including building new bike lanes on Temple Way and Victoria Street to separate bicycles from cars.
An update on the figures for 2025 was given to councillors on the transport policy committee as part of a raft of figures on various targets by Bristol City Council’s director of management of place, Patsy Mellor.
Of the casualties, 30 people were pedestrians, 44 were cyclists, 25 were car and taxi users, and 33 were motorbike riders.
Other road users, including e-scooter riders, made up seven per cent. The numbers of pedestrian and e-scooter casualties are falling, but the numbers of cyclists, car passengers and motorcyclists are increasing.
A committee report suggested that the rise in figures was due to changes in how Avon & Somerset Police report road traffic collisions, including how severe a casualty’s injury is determined.
The council recently consulted the public about reducing the speed limit from 30mph to 20mph on around 100 sections of roads across the city, to improve road safety.
At the start of the meeting, the transport committee heard various complaints from members of the public about council policies which aim to make the roads safer.
These included how replacing parking spaces in Southville with trees or benches will make parking harder; and how reducing the speed limit to 20mph on several roads will increase journey times.
Southville resident Alexandra Veitch told councillors: “You’re taking parking spaces away, a lot of parking spaces. And yet we already have a parking problem.
“I arrived back late at night from a long car journey and there was nowhere, absolutely nowhere, to park in the Southville zone.
“That’s going to happen regularly to people on a daily basis.”
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Main photo: Martin Booth
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