Reform UK accused of twisting 20mph road death figures

Emily Price 

Road safety campaigners have slammed Reform UK Senedd Members and the right-wing press for wrongly linking an increase in Welsh road deaths to the default 20mph speed limit.

Official Welsh Government statistics show that 91 people were killed in road collisions in Wales last year, seven more than in 2024.

The figures have been used by opponents of the 20mph default speed limit to argue that the policy has failed to make Welsh roads safer.

However, the increase in deaths did not occur on 20mph roads, they occurred on 60mph and 70mph roads.

In fact, figures show that 20mph and 30mph fatalities and collisions have all been lower since the 20mph default speed limit was introduced in September 2023.

Despite this, Reform MS Joe Martin told the Senedd this week that the increase in killed and seriously injured casualties showed that the 20mph policy had “achieved the opposite of what was intended”.

Martin cited police recorded road collisions and casualty figures from all roads in Wales, which rose from 1,091 in 2024 to 1,207 in 2025. He did not provided specific figures for 20mph roads.

In an op-ed for GB News published this week, Reform MS Jason O’ Connell also made “misleading” claims about the new data saying: “Labour’s 20mph experiment has made Welsh roads more dangerous, not safer”.

Rod King, founder of the 20’s Plenty campaign, accused Reform UK of being “disingenuous” and obscuring where the increase in road deaths actually occurred.

Analysis of the official data shows there were two more deaths on 70mph roads in 2025 than in 2024 and eight more on 60mph roads – a combined increase of 10 fatalities.

For the other speed limits, King pointed out that fatalities were either unchanged or lower.

He said: “Tragically in Wales in 2025 on 70mph roads 2 more people died than in 2024 and on 60mph roads it was 8 more people.

“That’s an additional 10 people and families devastated. At all other speed limits the fatalities in 2025 were the same or reduced.

“So what is the response of the right-wing politicians and press.

“Do they seek to find out where they died and what could be the difference between 2024 and 2025.

“Do they try to understand whether this is within expected year to year variations? Do they even reference the trauma involved?

“Well actually it was none of these. They chose to link the additional deaths on 60mph and 70mph roads to the award-winning default urban/village 20mph initiative implemented in 2023.”

The Welsh Government itself combines 20mph and 30mph roads when assessing the impact of the policy because most roads that were previously 30mph were changed to 20mph when the default limit came into force three years ago.

On those roads, King pointed out that the picture is markedly different from the “misleading” headlines run by right-wing news outlets this week.

He said: “Road deaths on Welsh urban/village roads (20mph and 30mph) in 2025 were lower than in 2022, 2023 and equal to 2024.

“Killed or serious injuries were lower in 2025 than 2021, 2022, 2023, but higher than 2024.

“The reporting is completely imbalanced and fails to inform the public what actually happened.

“It creates a divisive and toxic narrative around the 20mph initiative which has no connection to the additional 10 deaths.

“Any compassion and curiosity as to how families were impacted or how such increases could be avoided was lost in a gross attempt to bash political parties that actually delivered a 26% reduction in casualties on urban/village roads in Wales when comparing the casualties in the 24 months after with the 12 months before.

“Whilst there are responsible politicians and media outlets who will not hide from the toxic narrative from those opposing 20mph limits which are making our built-up places better places to be.

“This is an attempt to gain readers, clicks and votes at the expense of people dying and being injured on our roads.”

The Welsh Government told Nation.Cymru that some politicians and media outlets had focused on overall road casualty figures while overlooking the fact that fatalities and collisions on 20mph and 30mph roads have remained lower since the default 20mph limit was introduced.

A Welsh Government Spokesperson said: “Every death on our roads is a tragedy, and road safety remains a priority for this government.

“There were 19 fatalities on 20mph roads in Wales in 2025, and the same number in 2024. So, numbers of fatalities on 20mph roads in Wales has stayed the same not increased.

“And collisions on 20mph and 30mph are down 22% compared to 2022, when the default 20mph was introduced.

“In 2025, 91 people were killed in collisions on all types of roads in Wales, compared with 84 in 2024 and 96 in 2022, the year before the 20mph default speed limit was introduced.”

In January, the UK Government officially launched its first comprehensive Road Safety Strategy in over a decade.

It set out a target to reduce deaths and serious injuries on roads in Britain by 65% by 2035.

The strategy will be underpinned by a “safe system” approach which instead of placing all the blame on individual road users when a collision occurs, it shifts responsibility toward designing a transport environment that anticipates human error and actively protects people from severe harm.

King said this safe system approach “implicitly requires speed limits that create a survivable environment” for the UK’s most vulnerable road users.

He said: “Our politicians responsible for safety on our roads and in our communities must not be put off by the screaming of actors who clearly have neither the capacity or will to understand the issues or challenges involved.”

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