THE SAFEST large town in Spain for cyclists and pedestrians has been revealed – and it is one of 25 which fall below the European Union's yardstick for urban mobility security.
Of Spain's 88 towns and cities with 80,000 or more inhabitants, and based upon figures between 2014 and 2018 inclusive, the lowest mortality rate for those on foot or on wheels is the satellite municipality of Móstoles, just south of the city of Madrid.
It registered 0.1 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants during these five years.
In the research by MAPFRE insurance's social and humanitarian foundation, titled Horizon C3: Near-Zero Cities, the figure for Stockholm, Sweden was taken – 0.7 per 100,000 people – as it is considered a paragon of pedestrian and cyclist safety in Europe.
Over a quarter of Spain's biggest urban hubs are approximately level with, or below, Stockholm's mortality rate.
In five years, an average of 265 walkers and bikers lost their lives every year in these 88 municipalities, which the MAPFRE Foundation says is 'too high' and gives a national across-the-board figure of 1.27 per 100,000, but 25 towns and cities in nine of Spain's 17 autonomously-governed regions turned out to be safer than the Swedish capital.
The Galicia cathedral city of Santiago de Compostela (A Coruña province) had the second-lowest mortality rate at 0.21 per 100,000 residents, followed by two towns in the Greater Madrid region – San Sebastián de los Reyes (0.23) and Rivas-Vaciamadrid, which was joint third with 'Gwyneth Paltrow's town', Talavera de la Reina (Toledo province), at 0.24.
The next three were also in the Greater Madrid region, which arguably has a higher proportion of towns and cities of 80,000 or more inhabitants – Fuenlabrada, Alcalá de Henares and Torrejón de Ardoz, at 0.31 – and was followed by Elche, near Alicante airport, at 0.35, or half the figure of Stockholm, with Alcorcón (Madrid) at 0.36 concluding the top 10.
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