Copenhagen Safety

 In this blog post I will explore the different facets of safety - personal safety and infastrcuture safety. First, personal safety is my measurement of how safe I feel traveling around a city alone as a female. It's something that’s hard to measure, but somehow the built environment and culture have created safer space. In other cities I have travelled to, I get nervous when I go down the "wrong" street or that I'm going to be immediately robbed. Here, I feel like I could bike for miles before I ever felt safe - and that's probably only just because I went so far! At our discussion with Copenhagenize, they spoke about how biking culture has elevated the sense of safety. At any moment, bicyclists can add up to 30+ people out on the street. When a road has heavy car traffic, with a lot of people inside the vehicles, I don't feel significantly safer. Additionally, since bicycling is the main source of transit, late into the night you can still find people biking. After Midsommar, we biked back to the hostel around 11pm. Granted the sun was still not fully set, I never felt unsafe being out that late. Even at the water, I felt safe leaving my bag while I went to swim. I would never leave my bag in other cities - someone would steal it! Copenhagen-ers also trust each other. A women came and sat next to me and asked me to watch her bag while she went in the water. The only words we exchanged were pleasantries about the water temperature, but she chose to trust me. Doing a quick Google search, the 202 Safe Cities Index (SCI) named Denmark the world's safest city, scoring an 86.4 out of 100 in the personal security category (Scandification). For comparison, the highest ranking city is the U.S is New York with a score of 66.9. Additionally, a 2020 study by U.S. News placed Denmark as the best country for women (TripSaavy). 

I've also been curious about how much the biking infastrcuture improves safety conditions. There was definitly a learning curve the first day biking here. It's a lot to navigate pedestrians, cars, and anywhere from 5-20 bicyclists around you. I find that some of the lights are very short, causing you to abruptly stop. If someone isnt paying attention on the bike or using the crosswalk, you could easily collide. The Journal of Transport and Health has been tracking cycling injuries and although cycling has increased by more than 30% since 1998, cycling related injuries decreased from 45% to 33%. I can imagine this is because of the constant infrastructure improvements Copenhagen has made. In 2015, 26 cyclists were killed in traffic, 512 were seriously injured and 297 experienced light injuries in the whole country. I'm not sure how this data was collected but, I have the most confidence in the death statistic, which would not have been misreported. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recoded 932 bicyclist deaths in 2020. This is double Copenhagen and the U.S. has a much lower percentage of overall bicyclists. 

Sources: https://trid.trb.org/view/1515987#:~:text=In%20Copenhagen%20specifically%2C%20cycling%20even,and%20prevented%20deaths%20were%206190. 

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/bicycle-deaths/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20National%20Highway,all%20motor%2Dvehicle%20traffic%20fatalities.