New study shows some school gates are safer than others

Central London has the most dangerous school runs of anywhere in England and Wales, a new study has found, suggesting wider infrastructure and behaviour changes beyond School Streets are needed to make the school run safer.

 

Scrap Car Comparison analysed five years of Department for Transport collision data to count every collision that’s happened within 250 metres of a school during drop-off and pick-up times for 25,749 schools across England and Wales.

 

Between 2021 and 2025, there were 15,473 collisions recorded near 1,678 London schools, averaging 9.22 collisions per school over five years against an average of 1.95 for the rest of the country.

 

Outside of London, Portsmouth has the most incidents at 5.57 collisions per school, followed by Brighton at 5.56.

 

The findings are surprising given London is home to 800 of England’s 1,000 School Streets – temporary school closures meant to prevent incidents and promote active travel.

 

Analysis of the findings suggests the volume of cars and tighter congestion make London school drops riskier with more conflict. Study author Matt Clamp writes, "The school gate is a pinch point everywhere but it is a far smaller one when forty cars turn up rather than four hundred."

 

The safest school gates in the country are in Gwynedd, Wales. Of its 89 schools, there were, on average, 0.29 collisions per school, compared with 1.95 across the rest of England and Wales excluding London.

 

The study also surveyed 1,000 parents on their experiences of the school drop. For everyone familiar with bad parental behaviour that sees cars mounting pavements and haphazard parking on zig-zag lines, the fact that more than one in five parents (22%) have had a confrontation with another driver and almost one in five (18%) with another parent, won’t come as a surprise.

 

Almost half of parents (49%) have had at least one incident on the school run in the past 12 months, whether that’s a confrontation, a parking ticket or a collision.