Trusting in God may make people with strong religious beliefs take more risks when crossing the road, according to a team of scientists in Israel.
They found that devout Orthodox Jews were three times more likely to put themselves in danger from traffic than their secular neighbours.
They suspect that having faith in a higher law may make believers cavalier about state-imposed road rules.
Alternatively, those of a religious persuasion might take more risks because they have less fear of death.
Tova Rosenbloom, of Bar-Llan University in Ramat-Gan, decided to investigate after hearing complaints about pedestrian behaviour in the ultra-Orthodox community of Bnei-Brak.
”Drivers who get to Bnei-Brak complain that they need seven eyes,” she told New Scientist magazine.
”People walk on the roads as if they were footpaths.”
Rosenbloom and a team of researchers watched more than 1 000 pedestrians at two busy junctions, one in Bnei-Brak and the other in Ramat-Gan — a largely secular city.
They totalled up the number of times a pedestrian jaywalked, walked on the road rather than the footpath, crossed without looking out for traffic, or led a child across a road without holding its hand.
The residents of Bnei-Brak were three times more likely to break these rules as those of Ramat-Gan, the team reported in the journal Transportation Research. – Sapa-DPA