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In the Edinburgh Reporter yesterday based on a Sunday Mail report:

Scotland’s roads are becoming deadlier amid rising fatalities and surging traffic offences, latest figures reveal. Police Scotland say 92 people were killed in car, motorcycle and cycling collisions between April and September 2025 – nine more than the same period last year, an increase of almost 11%. They included one child and six cyclists. Motorcyclist deaths rose to the highest level for five years with 27 during the period.

The news comes as reckless drivers are increasingly flouting the law, with significant rises in drink and drug driving, speeding, dangerous driving and unsafe vehicle offences. Critics claim the rising death toll shows the SNP’s Road Safety Framework (RSF2030) – including its flagship pledge to halve fatalities by 2030 – is stalling. Scottish Conservative shadow transport secretary, Sue Webber MSP, said: “The tragic and rising death toll on Scotland’s roads come against a backdrop of the SNP’s failure to upgrade key roads and repair potholes.

“Cuts to road traffic policing have also made it more difficult for officers to crackdown on dangerous driving.”

Ms Webber added: “If SNP ministers are serious about meeting their target of halving the number of people killed on our roads by 2030, they should show some common sense and fund more road traffic officers and finally upgrade Scotland’s most dangerous roads like the A9 and A96.”

https://theedinburghreporter.co.uk/2026/02/number-of-fatalities-on-scotlands-roads-has-risen/

These are not full-year figures. Official full-year 2025 data won’t be available until provisional key stats (likely June 2026) and finals (October 2026) from Transport Scotland.

Notably, these are summer figures, typically higher than winter figures and say, only that. That there was an increase between the same periods in 2024 and in 2025 is no evidence of trend.

It is possible to compare whole-year data over a longer period of time to spot any trend but, of course, this would not satisfy their agenda, to be able to platform opposition parties to blame the SNP with ill-informed baseless claims about lawbreaking and potholes.

Has any road death in Scotland been blamed on a pothole and prosecuted on that basis?

No, not one.

Are ‘Scotland’s roads becoming deadlier amid rising fatalities?’

No

Overall from 2005 to 2024, road fatalities have roughly halved, from around 300 to around 160, even as vehicle numbers and miles driven have increased significantly.

https://www.transport.gov.scot/our-approach/statistics

Are traffic offences ‘surging’ as media put it?

No

Road traffic offences have decreased significantly over the past decade (down 33% from 170,462 in 2015–16 to 114,052 in 2024–25), though recent years show small upticks or stabilisation post-pandemic.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/recorded-crime-scotland-2024-25/pages/road-traffic-offences/

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