You may be familiar with it: you can feel from the road surface whether you have already crossed the border into Belgium. Does Belgium really have such bad roads? Well, at least worse than the Netherlands, but it could be much worse within Europe.
In the Netherlands we sometimes have traffic jams that you say to yourself, but we don’t have much to complain about the road surface itself. In fact, the Netherlands has the best road quality in all of Europe. This is evident from figures from the World Economic Forum, mapped by Landgeist.com. On a scale of 1 to 7, the Netherlands scores 6.4, the highest of all European countries. Our southern neighbors score a 4.4, so the difference is obvious in that regard. In Germany it is slightly better, with a 5.3 and France scores slightly better, with 5.4.
The worst roads in Europe can be found a lot further away from us. For that you have to go to the former Eastern bloc. According to the research, you will find the worst roads in Moldova, rated with a 2.6. Bosnia-Herzegovina follows with a 2.8 and also in Romania and Ukraine (both a score of 3) the quality of the roads is bad. If you want to stay a little closer to home and still put your shock absorbers to the test, it’s best to go to the Czech Republic (3.9).
Striking scores include Turkey (5) and Croatia (5.6), countries which, although relatively recently economically lagged behind Western Europe, yet have better roads than some Western European countries. It is also striking that Norway has a relatively poor score with a 4.5, while it is seen as an innovative country, for example, in the field of electric driving.
Road quality (source: Landgeist.com)