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Introduction A prominent policy, which has been proposed in many European municipalities over the last years is the promotion of cycling to decrease pollution and to increase public health. One important part of the assessment of this policy is the estimation of the induced change in bicycle crash numbers. Several recent works supported the ideas by reporting that cycling becomes safer if the number of cyclists increases, i.e., there seems to be a safety-in-numbers effect (SiN). Methods The problems related to the interpretation of bicycle crash and volume data are discussed and an approach aiming at a better understanding of the SiN-phenomenon is presented. In particular it is proposed to adopt models with memory to pursue causal relations and to study SiN at different time scales. To estimate daily cyclist volumes from irregular counts, a weather based model for bicycle volumes is developed. Results We provide a proof of concept for the proposed memory model by testing it on synthesized data and apply the proposed techniques on data provided by Berlin authorities. The application on synthetic data shows that improved fits with memory models can indicate temporal correlations within data and, thus, can give hints for causal relations. Although such a temporal correlation could not be substantiated in the real data, a surprising ambiguity was found to exist on different time scales. Over the long term, individual risks decline with increased bicycle volumes, while on shorter terms the opposite seems to be present: The more bicyclists are on the roads, the more unsafe cycling becomes. Conclusions The paper concludes by considering possible interpretations for the observed ambiguity. Further, a discussion of the developed methodology and some thoughts for a role that the SiN effect can play for transportation planning are included.