Are drivers from mainland Europe likely to end up in an accident when driving in the UK?

Are there any statistics showing the likelihood of mainland Europeans crashing in the UK?

(my emphasis)

No, not that I can easily find,

Rural Scotland

The Scottish government publish the following:

Tourist activity does significantly boost road accident numbers in the rural tourist areas of Scotland and visitor drivers, including foreign drivers, are involved in a measurably greater number of accidents in the
case study areas.

• Half of the drivers involved in accidents in Scotland were within 5km of their home address and fewer than
  2% were more than 240 km from it. However in the police areas of Grampian, which includes
  Aberdeenshire and Northern which contains Highland, fewer of the accidents involved drivers who were
  close to their homes.
• The involvement of tourists compared with locals in road accidents is probably not excessive in relation
  to their numbers and the increased mileage they probably drive.
• The exposure data for foreign drivers is not adequate to establish whether they are at greater risk of an
  accident than local drivers.
• The majority of accidents caused by foreign drivers arose from the drivers’ unfamiliarity with driving on
  the left hand side of the road.
• The accidents caused by UK visitor drivers may reflect their lack of driving and overtaking experience on
  rural single carriageway roads, since the crashes in which they were judged to be at fault involved losing
  control, the negotiation of bends and collision with pedestrians or animals.
• Local drivers who had caused an accident were most likely to have lost control or to have been driving
  too fast.

Tourist Road Accidents in Rural Scotland

Note the second point there.

It may be important to distinguish between “tourists”, “foreign drivers” and “UK visitor drivers” – It isn’t immediately obvious if the authors include Welsh, English and Northern Irish tourists in “foreign drivers”. The fourth bullet point suggests not.

It is also worth noting that driving on rural roads in Scotland is very different from driving through London in the rush hour.

The report draws this useful conclusion:

The data revealed that foreign drivers appear to have
difficulty remembering which side of the carriageway
to drive on. This may occur when no other traffic is
around or when they come to the end of a single track
road and rejoin a two lane single carriageway, or at
view points and resting places

So, drill yourself to pay extra attention in those situations 🙂

UK in general

There are some other UK statistics that might be used to produce some measure of the additional risk – if other data could also be found.

For foreign truck-drivers, the accident rates on motorways are eight times higher.

A third of accidents involving foreign lorries happen on motorways – nearly eight times higher than the national average rate for the UK’s 70 mph highways – with experts blaming drivers unfamiliar with UK highways, driving on the ‘opposite’ side of the road and often blind-sided.

Daily Mail

For foreign drivers in general, there were 18,865 accidents in the UK in 2006 giving rise to insurance claims.

Insurance claims involving foreign EU drivers in the UK have grown every year from 2001 to 2006 according to data from the Motor Insurers Bureau (MIB). Since 2001, collisions involving EU drivers have risen by 61.4% from 11,685 to 18,865.

AutoCar quoting Motor Insurer’s Bureau

Unfortunately these figures are insufficient to work out the increased likelihood of foreign drivers having an accident in the UK – I think I would need to find numbers of drivers (and/or road-miles traveled) for each group)

I am a Brit who lives in Germany and often returns to the UK with my German car. It’s normally not much of a problem. When I have made mistakes it has been when exiting one-way systems where you haven’t had oncoming traffic for a while. Another tricky situation can be single-track or unmarked roads with little traffic.

Whether it’s more dangerous or not is difficult to say. I think you are naturally a bit more concentrated than normal so you’ll be taking more care. Checking your mirrors when overtaking takes a bit of practice too.

Generally, I find it easier to drive a local UK car – but that is what I learnt on anyway so I might be biased.

Also be careful when you return to your normal environment. It may take a day or two to readjust!

There are no statistics for the nationality of drivers involved in accidents in the UK. I am pretty certain collecting this information would be against UK law if not European law as it could lead to discrimination.

The UK government collects the statistics for vehicle type, driver age, driver gender, road type, severity and accident type. You can see the latest statistics on their official site.

The roads in the UK are the second safest in Europe, you should be fine as long as you drive carefully.

Personally, as a Brit who has driven in Europe the biggest issues I came across was continually smacking my left hand on the driver door for first 10 minutes as I tried to change gear until I mentally flipped the car round. Driving in southern Spain is quite scary as you tend to come across less diligent Brits on the wrong side of the road coming towards you.

I feel I should warn you that the country roads in the UK are the least safe with the majority of accidents occurring on them. This is due to the narrowness, the high hedges and the speed. The speed limit on most country roads is 60 mph (roughly 100kph).

I’ve been to the UK several times with my German car, and I have also rented cars in left-driving countries.

If you’ve got an automatic transmission rental, you’re pretty good on the technology side. The hardest part really is to remember to go to the right hand side of the car instead of the left when getting into the driver seat. You will make that mistake frequently.

In terms of driving, there really is no big difference as long as your car is the right way around. With the rental, you will sit in the middle of the street, which makes things a lot easier, especially when turning right, which crosses the other side of the road. I’m mentioning that because it is what I found hardest with the wrong way around German car, as you’re sitting on the outside now, which is great if you are lost and have to ask for the way, but very inconvenient if you have a large guy next to you who is constantly blocking the view when you try to look around before turning right.

Hitting the curb has been given as a concern already, but I believe that this is not going to happen a lot if you’ve never driven on the left with a wrong way around car. First time in the right car, you will pretty soon figure it out. Only if you were used to sit at the edge of the road instead of the middle will you instinctively drift to the side because you are trying to align the right hand part of your body with the right curb instead of the left hand side of your body with the nearest left line on the road.

One thing where you need to take care is parking. It’s allowed to park against the direction of traffic in the UK, which is convenient (especially with a continental car, reverse parking is so much easier the regular way), but if you’re in a tiny town and there are no other cars around in the morning when you get started, you will at some point find yourself face to face with another car. In my case it was a taxi, in Newport, Wales.

Probably the best tip I ever got is to go to a bookstore and buy a The Highway Code book, which is kind of like a driving school reference. It has the official rules, including neat diagrams. It’s only 2.50 GBP, so I would definitely get one and keep it in the car at all times. You can find an online copy here.

Your biggest immediate concerns will be hitting the curb on roundabouts and other matters of judgement. As someone with a North American license, I have driven in the UK several times. I found it initially hard to judge distance.

You have to watch out on the country roads that have no lines and definitely stick to the larger roads at first.

it is a minor nuisance, but from personal experience, you will need a day or two of being careful and then a day or two after you’re accustomed to it to make sure you don’t fall into old habits.

The number one cause of accidents is distracted driving, and this will count doubly so when you’re driving on the opposite side of the road. Make sure you keep distractions away from you and be careful around the round-a-bouts.

You’ll be fine and it’s not as big of a deal as it seems, even driving a manual transmission. The foot pedals are still in the same place, so it will only be your hands that have to adjust.

You may trigger the windshield wipers a few times when indicating, though…. but hey that happens to the best of us in any car on any side of the road!

According to this link, 25,000 are killed each year when driving in another country. That doesn’t mean it’s only driving on the other side, though. Lots of things contribute to that number. http://www.advanceddrivers.com/info_80002.htm

Tips specific to UK and Ireland for foreigners including a great tip of getting an L sticker: https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/read/articles/driving-in-great-britain-and-ireland

Most of the time driving on the ‘wrong side’ isn’t a problem; if there is traffic around you have enough clues to remind you (assuming you are not the sort of driver who goes the wrong way along a motorway; apparently there are enough of these in Germany to have a special word, Geisterfahrer), and if there’s no traffic, you won’t hit anything even if you are on the wrong side for a few minutes. The tricky part, I understand, is when you start off, perhaps after stopping for petrol; it’s easy to do what you are used to.

I strongly recommend having a front-seat passenger, who can issue a suitable reminder (‘Eeek!’) when you forget; with that, you should be fine