Greater Belfast commuter corridor: Holywood Bypass reached 13 nearby injury collisions in 2025
PureCar’s mapped Holywood Bypass investigation, east of Belfast, records 13 nearby injury collisions in 2025: the highest annual count in its 2013–2025 series.
The highest annual count in the available series
The Holywood Bypass, east of Belfast and outside Belfast City district, is part of the wider Belfast commuter road network. Its mapped corridor recorded 13 police-reported injury collisions in 2025, according to PureCar’s analysis of PSNI records and DfI road geometry. The previous highest annual total in the displayed 2013–2024 series was 12 in 2017. In 2024, the corridor recorded eight incidents, making the 2025 total five higher.
This is a specific, time-bounded observation. It does not show that the bypass was at its most dangerous ever, that 13 people were injured, or that all incidents occurred on the named road itself. The underlying search includes police-recorded injury collisions within 100 metres of two selected mapped road sections.
A 13-year record with contrasting periods
Across 2013–2025, PureCar’s mapped selection contains 103 injury collisions: one fatal-severity, ten serious-severity and 92 slight-severity incidents. The linked casualty file records one person killed, ten seriously injured and 176 slightly injured, a total of 187 people. Those people are distinct from the number of collisions.
There were 49 nearby injury collisions in 2013–2018 and 41 in 2019–2024. That is eight fewer incidents across the later six-year block. The five-collision annual increase in 2025 therefore sits alongside a longer-term comparison that does not show a straightforward continuous rise.
How unusual was 2025?
The series also records four injury collisions in 2013, four in 2020 and four in 2023. Its previous peak was 12 in 2017. While 13 was the largest recorded annual total in the displayed period, single-year numbers on a relatively small corridor can change considerably with only a handful of incidents.
The three-year rolling average ending in 2025 was 8.33, up from 6.33 for the three years ending in 2024. That is an increase in a descriptive historical count, not a traffic-adjusted risk rate or a forecast of future collisions.
The missing evidence behind a safety judgment
Neither the totals nor the map demonstrate what caused the 2025 change. They do not establish whether a junction layout, driver behaviour, traffic volume or another factor was responsible. In particular, a proximity match does not demonstrate that a vehicle was travelling on the bypass itself.
A follow-up investigation would request the location-specific engineering record, recent traffic-volume estimates, any safety audit and a breakdown of the individual 2025 incident sites. The PSNI and DfI have not provided fresh comment specifically for this report. Until that additional evidence is established, the responsible conclusion is narrow: 2025 had the highest number of nearby recorded injury collisions in the particular 13-year mapped series.
Sources and methodology
This report is based on police-recorded injury collision statistics and the linked PureCar road-safety dataset. Figures describe historical recorded incidents, not live traffic hazards. A collision is one event; casualties are people injured or killed in that event. Statistical classifications and mapped-corridor boundaries are explained in the cited source pages.
