Belfast recorded 180 serious or fatal casualties; Mid Ulster had most road deaths in 2025
PureCar original analysis | 23 October 2026. Two different 2025 measures identify different council areas — and show how easily local crash rankings can mislead. This report separates recorded evidence from analysis, so readers can understand not only the headline but also the limits of the data.
Different measures, different leaders
The PSNI’s 2025 summary records Belfast City as the council area with the highest number of killed or seriously injured casualties, at 180. Mid Ulster recorded the highest number of road deaths, nine. Derry City and Strabane recorded no road deaths that year. These are not contradictory findings: they describe different outcomes in different geographic areas.
Why a zero is not a clean bill of health
No fatalities in a council area during one calendar year is welcome, but it is not evidence that there were no injury collisions or serious injuries. Equally, having the most KSI casualties does not automatically make Belfast the riskiest place for each journey. Council areas differ in population, commuting patterns, through-traffic, road length and road type. Those differences need to be considered before a ranking is treated as a risk measurement.
A better local comparison
A useful council profile would display fatalities, serious injuries, slight injuries, collision counts, time periods and trends side by side. It would then examine specific roads and junctions rather than infer every street shares the same risk. Comparisons should use the same geographic boundaries and recorded-collision definitions. Where reliable traffic exposure estimates exist, they should be included rather than assuming counts measure individual danger.
What PureCar will scrutinise
The most valuable next layer is the gap between totals and individual locations: roads that contribute repeated injury incidents, junctions that need review, and whether an improvement is followed by sustained changes. Those findings should be labelled as analysis of recorded data rather than as an official safety judgment. The main takeaway from 2025 is that deaths and severe injuries can produce very different local maps.
An administrative boundary is not a risk ranking
Official 2025 summaries report 180 killed-or-seriously-injured casualties in Belfast City, nine road deaths in Mid Ulster and no road deaths in Derry City and Strabane. These describe different outcomes and geographic areas. PureCar should not put Belfast first in a “deadliest council” ranking based on 180 KSI casualties while calling Mid Ulster first using deaths: that changes the measure mid-comparison.
Nor does zero recorded deaths mean zero injury collisions, no serious injuries or no future hazard. Fatality counts are relatively small and can vary substantially between years. A fairer reporting panel would show fatalities, serious injuries, slight injuries, year-on-year movement, population, road mileage and traffic exposure for each council area, with source dates and definitions.
The useful local question is which repeat-injury sites warrant a targeted road review within each area, not which council can be assigned a simplistic “safe” or “unsafe” label.
About the evidence
This PureCar analysis uses officially published PSNI and Northern Ireland departmental statistics. The police series covers injury road traffic collisions reported to police; it does not capture every non-injury bump, near miss or unreported incident. A collision is an event and a casualty is a person, so the two totals must not be used interchangeably. The figures are historical and do not indicate conditions on any route right now.
What the figures cannot prove
A higher count in a place or group does not, by itself, establish greater risk per vehicle journey, per mile travelled or per person. The appropriate denominator and road-user exposure data would be required for that conclusion. Nor can the published summary alone establish responsibility for individual incidents. Where this article raises questions about infrastructure, enforcement or road-user behaviour, those are reporting questions unless a cited source confirms an answer.
Explore the underlying information
For local road context, see PureCar’s Northern Ireland road safety reports. For present-day road disruption, use PureCar traffic information. The PSNI road collision statistics library contains the official statistical series and supporting files. Figures can be revised by data owners; for definitive tables and definitions readers should check the official publications directly.
