Why London’s Roads Are Hardest on Motorbike Riders
Motorbikes make up roughly 1% of traffic on London’s roads. That’s not much at all. But Transport for London’s 2024 casualty data put motorcyclists at 16% of everyone killed in the capital that year, with eighteen riders dead and 788 seriously injured.
Serious motorcycle casualties climbed 6% from 2023 on top of all that, which tells you how little has actually changed. Behind those figures, the collision data points to specific crash patterns and locations that keep catching riders out, and south-west London comes up over and over again.
Junctions, Right Turns and the Same Pattern Repeating
If you dig into TfL’s collision data, the same answer comes up every time: junctions are where motorcyclists in London get hurt and killed more than anywhere else. Right-turn collisions are one of the deadliest patterns. A car will turn across the path of an oncoming bike, the rider won’t have enough time to brake or swerve, and another serious or fatal motorcycle crash goes on the books.
Riders around Teddington, Richmond, Twickenham and Kingston will know the A316 well enough to picture this immediately. The road moves fast. Junction after junction lines the route, and near Kingston Bridge the traffic funnels in from multiple directions at once, so a rider filtering through stationary cars at 30mph will go completely unseen by a driver focused on pulling into the gap ahead of them.
So far, TfL’s Safer Junctions programme has completed work at 45 locations across London, but coverage from borough to borough remains uneven. Speed plays a role in roughly half of all fatal collisions in the capital, and outer boroughs like Kingston and Richmond lie along busy commuter corridors where heavy traffic mixes with 40mph limits. Riders pay the price for that.
What Happens When a Rider Gets Knocked Off
A car pulls out and connects with a motorcyclist, and the rider goes straight down on the tarmac. Even at relatively low speed, you can end up with broken bones, deep road rash, destroyed leathers and a bike that’ll never be economical to repair.
The immediate priorities are obvious. Get off the road if you can move safely, call 999 if anyone is hurt, and don’t remove your helmet unless you have to because spinal injuries aren’t always obvious right away. Once the scene is under control, photograph everything: the vehicles, the road layout, any damage to your gear and the junction itself. If the collision happened at a spot like Kingston Bridge or the A316, where the junction design is part of the problem, those photos could matter a lot later.
Exchange details with the other driver and get contact information from any witnesses. Report the accident to your insurer within the timeframe your policy requires, even if you’re certain the other driver was at fault.
What if the Other Driver Caused It?
Most riders will phone their insurer immediately after a crash. Going through your own policy after a non-fault collision can mean paying an excess, risking your no-claims bonus and waiting weeks for a resolution that might not even cover everything.
A lot of riders don’t realise they can go after the at-fault driver’s insurer directly by pursuing a non-fault motorbike accident claim instead. That route covers repairs, replacement transport, gear and any related expenses, with costs recovered from the other side rather than your own policy.
What’s Actually Being Done to Protect London’s Riders
TfL’s flagship safety intervention has been the rollout of 20mph zones across the capital. Its own analysis of over 150 of these schemes found improved outcomes for every road user category except motorcyclists, where fatalities showed no change. The rollout is continuing anyway, with no published investigation into why it doesn’t work for the group most likely to die on London’s roads.
Training has gone backwards too. The Met’s BikeSafe programme ran around 800 to 900 courses a year in London, plus roughly 200 specialist CourierSafe sessions for delivery riders, making it the largest provider in the country. In February 2026, the Met disbanded its specialist Motorcycle Safety Team and scrapped BikeSafe entirely. TfL was providing increased funding to the Met at the time, so this wasn’t a budget cut. What’s replaced it so far is a broader Road Danger Reduction Team inside the Met and a TfL media campaign telling drivers to look out for motorcyclists.
Why the Numbers Should Worry Every London Rider
In 2024, 81% of everyone killed or seriously injured on London’s roads fell into just three groups: people on foot, people on bicycles and people on motorbikes. Motorcyclists take the biggest hit. TfL’s data shows riders are roughly 15 times more likely to die per journey than the average across all road user types, which is a gap that hasn’t closed in any meaningful way.
Anyone who rides through Kingston or along the A316 twice a day won’t find those numbers abstract. Mistakes cost more here. A single error on a motorbike will get punished far more harshly than it would in a car, and nothing in the recent data suggests things will improve for London’s riders anytime soon.