Ultra-Orthodox Jews

New research shows that Ultra-Orthodox Jews are more likely to jaywalk:

It is rarely said that religious types live dangerously, but it seems they do when it comes to crossing roads. A new study in Israel suggests devout Orthodox Jews are three times as likely to be risk-taking pedestrians as their neighbours in secular communities.

Tova Rosenbloom of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel, suspected religious beliefs might play a role after hearing complaints about pedestrian behaviour in the ultra-Orthodox community of Bnei-Brak, also in Israel.

"Drivers who get to Bnei-Brak complain that they need seven eyes," she says. "People walk on the roads as if they were footpaths."

To find out more, Rosenbloom and her colleagues watched more than 1000 pedestrians at two busy junctions, one in Bnei-Brak and the other in Ramat-Gan, a largely secular city. They totted up the number of times a pedestrian either jaywalked, walked on the road rather than the footpath, crossed without looking for traffic, or crossed without holding an accompanying child's hand.

The ultra-Orthodox inhabitants of Bnei-Brak were three times as likely to break these rules as people in Ramat-Gan, the team found.

Rosenbloom thinks that ultra-Orthodox faith might contribute to this cavalier behaviour by making people respect religious law more than state-imposed rules. It is also possible that religious people take more risks because they are more fatalistic and have less fear of death.