Where is the safest place in Europe to cycle?

The second annual cycle report by the European Cyclists’ Federation has provided some fresh insight into which countries lead the way on cycling issues in 27 EU countries – With the UK just scraping its way into the top ten.

Considering in equal measure tourism, safety, bike sales, cycling levels and advocacy efforts; the report takes into account five verifiable EU-wide surveys. The countries are then given points according to their rank in each field and all points are summed to get a final score.

“The ECF Barometer was built as a talking point to raise awareness on the need to get good cycling data. It was a big success last time so we hope to see the discussion continue again this year” says Chloé Mispelon, ECF project leader for the barometer.

"Indeed, in the last two years the European Commission published two Flash Eurobarometers including cycling data. That’s more than in the 5 previous years."

Top of the pile on safety Malta and Luxembourg have the best records. Predictably, levels of cycling are highest across the Netherlands.

With all things considered, The Netherlands shares the top spot with Denmark, with both having particularly strong records across the board. 

Slovenia jumped the most ranks to 7th place, surpassing countries like the UK and France. Luxembourg also leapt forward, most likely due to a good cycling fatalities record and great cycling advocate numbers/population. Spain jumped forward mainly due to improvement in all five criteria. Some countries have more or less maintained their relative positions – like Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic – and similarly to 2013 countries in the South and East of Europe still show a lot of room for improvement. 

One disappointment in this year’s barometer is the bad score for Ireland, despite great cycling developments in Dublin, as they went down in ranking due to the cycling use criteria.

A technical note explaining the source of the data used for the ECF Cycling Barometer can be downloaded from here. 

The findings of the debut 2013 report can also be found here.

You can follow the ECF on Twitter here.