Cars are expensive. They're expensive to buy, expensive to insure, expensive to store, expensive to maintain, and expensive to crash. Bicycles are none of those things. And bikes outsell cars almost everywhere in Europe. Shocker.
But what is actually shocking is that the bicycles have only recently started to outsell cars in some European countries. Spain, which has been going through some economic difficulties, only just started to sell more bicycles than cars.
You'd think that the sheer preponderance of world class cycling roads and events that occur in the region would have been enough to make cycling far and away more popular than cars. Spain is also a big motorcycle country, so I thought that would've contributed.
In fact, the only two countries in the region that sold more cars than bikes were Luxembourg and Belgium, which I thought would be bike heavy for some reason. I've never been to either place and know of literally zero stereotypes about them as bikers, but don't they just seem like they'd love cycling?
As the European economy still slumps, I'd expect that we'd see bikes continue to outpace cars for years to come.