<span class="caps">FT</span> Magazin : Is urban cycling worth the risk?

If you live in a big city, you may have thought about cycling to work. You will have weighed up the pros and cons: the health ben­e­fits, the low cost, the speed – ver­sus the fact that you might be hit by an 18-tonne artic­u­lat­ed lor­ry. On bal­ance, you may have decid­ed you didn’t want to take the risk.

You would be in the major­i­ty. In 2014, 64 per cent of peo­ple sur­veyed by the UK’s Depart­ment of Trans­port said they believed it was too dan­ger­ous for them to cycle on the road. These deci­sions are often based on gut feel­ings or anec­dote: a friend who has had a great expe­ri­ence com­mut­ing by bike can inspire us to fol­low suit, while see­ing or hear­ing about a bad cycling acci­dent may put us off for life.

Such expe­ri­ences are impor­tant. But what do the data say? As cities grow busier, obe­si­ty lev­els rise and cli­mate change becomes a more press­ing con­cern, we asked the FT’s trans­port cor­re­spon­dent and two of our spe­cial­ist data jour­nal­ists to inves­ti­gate the risks and ben­e­fits of com­mut­ing by bike in big cities, some­thing all of them do reg­u­lar­ly. Here they give us their ver­dict: is it worth it?

Enjoy the full arti­cle and amaz­ing draw­ings on ft.com