The Use of Mobile Phones and Other Unsafe Behavior While Cycling in the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City

Jaime Santos-Reyes (), Yareli Pastenes-Medina and Diego Padilla-Pérez
Additional contact information
Jaime Santos-Reyes: Grupo de Investigación SARACS, SEPI-ESIME, Zac., Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico City 07738, Mexico
Yareli Pastenes-Medina: Grupo de Investigación SARACS, SEPI-ESIME, Zac., Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico City 07738, Mexico
Diego Padilla-Pérez: Grupo de Investigación SARACS, SEPI-ESIME, Zac., Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico City 07738, Mexico

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Unsafe behavior while driving contributes to road accidents. The paper addresses cyclists’ risky behavior by employing a questionnaire-based survey to a sample of n = 1136 in the metropolitan area of Mexico City. The main results are as follows: (a) 31.4% and 24.2% of the participants use a mobile phone for talking and text messaging while cycling, respectively, with males engaging in these unsafe acts more often than females; (b) a high percentage of participants are most likely to communicate with their parents, through either talking (48.9%) or text messaging (39.6%); (c) regarding the use of mobile phones for talking/texting (along with social network and gender) as predictors of a crash/fall while cycling, it was found that a one SD change in the frequency of talking while cycling increased the odds of a crash/fall by a factor of 1.198, as did a one SD increase in the frequency of texting by 1.232, while gender contributed to the outcome but not the individuals to whom cyclists talk or text; (d) cycling “without holding the handlebars” contributed significantly to the outcome. An education campaign or legislation enforcement (or both) may be needed to prevent single-bicycle crashes related to this unsafe act.

Keywords: mobile phone; social network; unsafe behavior; single-bicycle crash; crash/fall (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/1/61/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/1/61/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2022:i:1:p:61-:d:1009664

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().