Selection Process for Insurify’s 2021 Best Biking Cities Awards
The data scientists at Insurify, a site to compare home insurance quotes, analyzed proprietary and public data to identify the most bike-friendly city in each state. Cities were ranked based on a composite score of factors such as overall bike friendliness, bike commuting prevalence, bike incidents (including crashes, theft, or other safety hazards), and DUI and passing violation rates.
Overall quality for bicyclists is from PeopleForBikes’ City Ratings index. PeopleForBikes, a nonprofit organization that works with federal, state, and local governments to enforce safe biking regulations, rated over 600 U.S. cities on a five-star scale for their commitment to the safety and wellbeing of the cyclist community. The percentage of commuters who bike in each city was gleaned from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The prevalence of bike incidents by city was gathered from Bikewise.org, a cyclist incident reporting site. Cities with lower rates of these incidents received a higher score.
Insurify’s data scientists referred to their database of over 4 million car insurance applications to determine citywide rates of DUIs and passing violations. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), vehicle non-occupants, including cyclists, make up 13% of DUI fatalities. Illegal passing additionally presents a danger for cyclists on the road, so cities with lower rates of these infractions scored higher in Insurify’s analysis.
States with insufficient municipal data (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Hawaii, and West Virginia) were excluded from the analysis.
Best Bicycling Cities
As of 2021, these are the cities in each state that are the best for bicyclists. These cities have lower incidents and driving infraction rates involving bicyclists, higher volumes of cyclist commuters, and have been rated highly for overall bike-friendliness on a national scale.
