Upvote:3
I myself am a first time visitor in Romania and have spent some time cycling here. I don't know from personal experience, but have been told a lot of bicycles are stolen here and that you should always lock your bike.
Bucharest being more dangerous than anywhere else in Romania and with that said, I'd personally avoid it. But your other cities here, I wouldn't worry too much about your safety, it's safer than a lot of other places.
As for the traffic, well, it's not very safe. Drivers are quite aggressive and not at all courteous. (At least here in Cluj-Napoca)
I'm always cautious riding on the road here, and you have to ride defensively and be fully aware of your surroundings (360 degrees).
Upvote:6
Being from Romania + using bike in the city + having 900 km long bike trip behind me, I can tell you the followings:
Get a good map and try to avoid the main roads. Romania is worth a visit, people are friendly and helpful in most cases. These road issues can be avoided by travelling on the county level roads (marked with blue sign on the maps) or the local roads (yellow, although these might be of very-very poor quality sometimes).
Upvote:8
Difficult to give an answer with hard data on this question, but I can talk from personal experience of cycling multiple Eastern European countries (not Romania, but Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo...)
Traffic, especially out of the cities, is in general pleasant. This is mainly because the traffic is less dense in Eastern Europe, than in Western Europe. But people tend to drive fast on curvy roads. Just make sure you stick to the right side of the road and everything should be fine. To me it didn't feel less safe than Italy, but even in Italy there is a huge variation. I felt a lot safer in the Alps than in let's say Napoli.
Considering the risk of robbery, you are in my opinion overly worried. It can of course happen, just like it can happen anywhere. But normally the remote places are the safest in that regard, while it are the cities that pose the highest risk for criminality.
My advice would be to tackle the safety aspect in exactly the same way as you did it on previous trips and focus on more important issues: finding nice routes etc.
Upvote:9
Speaking of Poland, where I live, I'd say there's nothing to worry about regarding safety. No wild tribes living in the forests, no pirates and no horse stealers gangs are there nowadays :) Of course if you leave your expensive bike outside without any lock, it can happen that someone will pay more interest to it and eventually take it, but I'm sure it's equally possible in Italy or the Netherlands. But reasonable amount of precaution similar to wester Europe will be more than enough to spend fantastic time here.