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Cyclist in traffic (copyright Simon MacMichael)Where is Britain's safest and most dangerous city for cycling? This new research (might) have some answers
Cycling can be one of the most rewarding ways to get from A to B, especially in urban areas where there are already too many cars on the road. Chances are if you are reading this then you probably don't need convincing.
Unfortunately however, riding a bicycle through a city can, at other times, also be some of the most stressful, dangerous and downright unpleasant riding you'll ever do. More road users, as well as more junctions and roundabouts all increase the likelihood of collisions.
> New global ranking shows UK cities have a lot of catching up to do on cycling
Just from personal experience, six months of commuting to London by bike led to as many falls as riding in the lanes during the previous decade. Injury compensation website Claims.co.uk has done some actual research to try to crunch the figures, which should hopefully be a touch more informative than me emotionally judging cities based on how they treated me...
They analysed over 12,000 cycling routes in cities up and down the United Kingdom, factoring in the number of incidents, steepness(?), surface quality and lighting, to come up with a 'danger score' for each. Yes, a bit like Top Trumps...
UK's 'safest cities for cycling'
Surprisingly considering some of the things said about cycling in Essex recently, its third largest city Chelmsford came out on top as the safest city for cyclists, with a low 'average bike accident score' of 0.08, as well as reasonable surface quality and lighting.
Worcester and Nottingham made the podium in second and third respectively. Nottingham had a lower 'accident score' than Worcester, but Claims.co.uk's research assessed the Worcestershire city as safer due to its superior road surfaces and lighting.
There was Midlands representation elsewhere in the safest top-ten list, with Leicester ranked seventh.
With that said, there is a definite southern feel to the safest cities: Gloucester, Cambridge, St Albans and Norwich came fifth, sixth, ninth and tenth respectively.
Of the more northerly cities to make the top-ten, Lincoln ranked highest in fourth place, while York and Wakefield were eighth and ninth.
UK's 'most dangerous cities for cycling'
Birmingham was ranked as the most dangerous city for cyclists in the UK according to Claims.co.uk, who scored the second city a danger score of 7.38, just under six points higher than Chelmsford, and five points higher than nearby Worcester.
Newcastle upon Tyne, Plymouth, and Sheffield followed closely behind, with 7.21, 7.17 and 7.08 scores respectively.
Perhaps surprisingly, London only came fifth in the top-ten most dangerous list. The English capital had the highest 'accident score' by far — 9.58, but was helped by the relatively simple terrain and well-surfaced roads.
Preston, Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent, Bristol and Brighton completed the top-ten.
Where this research appears to fall down is on analysis of the number of cyclists and cycling journeys, with the number of reported 'bike crashes' as Claims.co.uk put it seemingly one of the main deciding factors in assigning a city its overall danger score. This could be why most of the top 10 'most dangerous' are higher population cities, and many of the 'safest' are considerably smaller.
While Chelmsford and Worcester both had a low number of reported 'bike crashes', this could in part be because of low cycling numbers. We reported on the dangers of cycling in Essex on the road.cc Podcast recently, while a controversial cycling ban in Worcester city centre isn't exactly a great advert for cycling in that area.
We could also find fault with the wording of the 'bike accident score' metric used by Claims.co.uk, but the people behind the Road Collision Reporting Guidelines can probably explain why that is far better than us.
What do you think? Can we create a 'score' to represent how safe cities are to cycle in? Any surprises? Where did your city rank?
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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35 comments
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I see that Preston has now been moved to Yorkshire, according to the map.
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What else in this survey must we doubt?
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It looks like all the other cities have been dragged in to London's gravity well a bit.
Or possibly the designer made the map bigger at some point and failed to adjust the position of the markers to match.
So largely mid-sized university towns (and similar - plus Leicester?) lead the list, and sprawling cities traversed by fast roads and dual carriageways the least safe. No surprise there. But no Oxford or Cambridge? Probably our two cities with the highest number of cycling journeys per capita?
Sheffield is a strange one and definitely the most dangerous place I have cycled. It falls into the sprawling city category and despite having two universities students don't seem to cycle much (though this might be because both the Uni and Poly are central), but on the whole you'd think that a city so close to the Peak District would have a healthy relationship with cycling.
I would've expected to see London further up the list of safe places to cycle but the numbers are meaningless unless they are adjusted for cyclist numbers / journeys made?
Cambridge is there - 6th in the list of safest. Oxford is mid-table (19th).
Oops, so it is. And right up there - though lower than you'd expect unless you count cycling students crashing into pedestrians on mobile phones!
Ah, Britain = England. Now there's a surprise. Us Celts don't matter.
Pathetic.
The research is claimed to have covered the whole of the UK, and these lists are the 10 safest and 10 most dangerous cities for cycling. Isn't it possible that by the metrics chosen for this research Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have neither one of the 10 most dangerous or 10 safest cities?
It did include Newport (20th), Cardiff (28th), and Swansea (30th) in the 41 they rated, but nothing in Scotland or NI for some reason.
Even the English cities they chose to include seem a little arbitrary.
If there is no factoring in of cycle use in the report....
"Where this research appears to fall down is on analysis of the number of cyclists and cycling journeys"
then the analysis is worthless. Any town/city with no cyclists will be by default the "safest" place to cycle.
How does this data have credibility when the basic geography on the maps is so embarassaingly incorrect.
"Bike crashes" seems reasonable enough to me - you can see from the illustration that what they're talking about is people riding their bikes into the side of unattended vehicles.
Or maybe these bicycles are - like so many cars - riding into things while their owners / riders (drivers) are powerless to stop them?
Dang! My money was on St Andrews :o(
Mine was on St David's.
I would've put money on Wells. It's a city, even tho it's teeny tiny. St Andrews is a town.
St Davids would do you one better in that regard. Although I suspect it might suffer a bit on the 'steepness' score.
Wow, compared to St Davids, Wells is a metropolis! I've never been there. I have been to Wells and lived.
"Thankfully, injury compensation website Claims.co.uk(link is external) has done some actual research"
No they haven't. it's clearly total nonsense. How have they even assessed the surface quality and lighting? Why is steepness a factor? Has the nuber of inclidents been normalised for the number of cycling journeys?
Dodgy claims by ambulance chasers, realy poor to be promting this
They did some research on the easiest way to get some free coverage.
Looking at the map, and having lived just outside Preston for all my life, I never realised that it was situated in the centre of the country.
Preston and Manchester appear to have swapped places with Huddersfield and Sheffield
And Newcastle looks to have been relocated about 90 miles further south, along what is a shonky-looking coastline. The writing on here has been kindergarten level for some time, but Christ could someone not have obtained a proper map, and checked the geography a bit......
I think we need a study to find Britain's crappiest study, and this one would definitely feature in the top ten, along with RoSPA's study about scooter safety.
Hmm, part of the danger is steepness! Not sure why that would have an effect and / or be a danger but as Birmingham is pretty hilly (the centre is pretty much on a hill so uphill from any direction) and quite a few of the others are hilly. My 15 mile round commute is about 300m in total a day.
your 15 mile commute is around 1000ft? or your 24km commute is around 300m?
No no no, his 78 picoparsec commute involves 164 fathoms of climbing.
An entertaining use of units of measure. I like to understand uom so I had to check the numbers and the 164 fathoms is spot on but the picoparsecs number is off by a factor of 100. Or you missed off the decimal point.
You've got that the wrong way round - distance in kms, climbing in feet - I did 100kms and 2000 feet sounds way better than 62 miles and 600 metres!
I always love seeing a headline about "britain's best" something or other - just to find a map that stops at Carlisle - well done for not disappointing!
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