Safety

It is important to highlight that the improvement of safety conditions naturally encourages greater use of the bicycle but, at the same time, the opposite phenomenon is also true: more people who use the bicycle generate an improvement in safety thanks to the so-called "safety in numbers" (ITF, 2021). The presence of people cycling on the roads actually generates a sense of familiarity with their movements and their ways of using the road space to the drivers of other vehicles. One "gets used" to seeing more people cycling and learn to respect their presence. This phenomenon, which can be found in Lombardy and Metropolitan City of Milan’s data analysis, has been detected in a similar way in all the main European countries (ITF, 2021).

In conclusion, increasing safety for cyclists has the potential to engage a virtuous circle by encouraging more and more people to pedal for all their movements and consequently intrinsically increasing the safety of those who pedal.