Annual report & accounts 2025-26

  1. Introduction
  2. Highlights
  3. Education & training
  4. Monitoring everyday cycling, road safety and connecting people
    1. Monitoring everyday cycling in Scotland
    2. Road safety
    3. Connecting people
  5. Access to bikes, cycle parking & storage
  6. Transport Planning & Engineering
  7. Organisation

Monitoring cycling, road safety and connecting people

Road safety

Urgent and long-lasting change is needed to create safer roads for everyone. In collaboration with other road safety stakeholders, our work to improve safety for people cycling this year focused on the following areas.

Work-related road risk

Cycling Scotland continues to advocate for raised safety standards for large commercial vehicles which pose increased risks to people cycling, walking and wheeling:

  • Through the Scottish Occupational Road Safety Alliance (ScORSA), we presented to the Scottish Parliament’s Accident Prevention and Safety Awareness Cross-Party Group, highlighting the steps needed to improve safety for vulnerable road users.

  • 550 drivers of Large Goods Vehicles (LGV), Passenger Carrying Vehicles (PCV) and vans, working in the commercial and public sector, took part in Road User Awareness Training, to help them drive safely around people on bikes. (More info in Education & Training).

  • We commissioned independent research, with funding from the Road Safety Framework Fund, into work-related road risk and how to prevent it. The findings showed that roads are the leading location for work-related injuries and fatalities and people from the most deprived backgrounds are overrepresented in collisions with goods vehicles, when walking or cycling. We shared initial findings at the Road Safety Scotland seminar, along with recommendations for change: safer vehicles (especially vans and HGVs), increased driver training and policies that support staff who drive for work.

  • We worked with partners on measures to incentivise higher fleet operating and driving standards that can make our roads safer for all.

Illegal use of electric motorbikes

As a member of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS), we contributed to a 2026 briefing paper for MPs, setting out evidence and recommendations to prevent illegally modified e-bikes and e-motorbikes being ridden unlawfully on our roads. 

We communicated through national media the need for urgent action, including stronger market regulation, enforced compliance checks from delivery platforms, improved enforcement and clearer consumer information. 

We continue to support the work of partners to highlight this issue, including the recent launch of a UK-wide ‘E-Bike Positive’ safety trust mark, launched by the Bicycle Association and Association of Cycle Traders, to improve industry and public confidence around e-bike use.

Engagement and collaborative working

We have contributed to local road safety meetings across Scotland, engaging with partners on cycling safety, including Transport Scotland’s Local Partnership Forums. 

We chaired a new Transport Scotland governance meeting, the Vulnerable Road User Key Priority Group, working with road safety stakeholders to coordinate collaborative efforts to improve safety for people cycling, walking, wheeling and riding horses.

Give Cycle Space

We ran the Give Cycle Space campaign in Angus, Perth and Kinross, Dundee and Stirling, with funding from Tactran through the Scottish Government’s People and Place Programme.

The road safety campaign shows why people driving need to follow the rules of the road and drive safely around people cycling, always giving at least 1.5 metres of space.

Using existing, award-winning creative to provide extra value-for-money, the campaign launched on radio, bus backs and digital media in February.

We shared a toolkit with road safety officers in Local Authorities across the region to help them amplify content on their internal and external channels.  

The total reach of the campaign was more than 2.3 million across all media, with 73% of the target audience seeing an advert at least once and 39% seeing an advert three or more times.