We’ve all been there: an office party or backyard BBQ where you, the cyclist, end up defending cyclists’ behavior to people. Here’s a new piece of ammo: A massive new study shows that while cyclists do break traffic laws, they do so mostly in service of self-preservation.

The study (“Scofflaw Bicycling: Illegal But Rational”), just published in the Journal of Transport and Land Use, details when, how, and why cyclists decide to break traffic laws. The authors, an engineer and sociologist from the University of Colorado and an urban planning professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, set out to study the subject of cyclist misbehavior, which they say has surprisingly scant research.

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“Everyone breaks the law, but things like going over the speed limit in a car are socially acceptable; we don’t see that as criminal,” says lead study author Dr. Wesley Marshall, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado-Denver. But drivers often don’t see that nuance when cyclists break the law. (Laws aside, how you ride matters: Be the most dialed rider on the road using tips from the Bicycling Complete Book of Road Cycling Skills!)

What Marshall wanted to learn was simple: “When cyclists break the law, are they behaving like this image of a bike messenger's reckless behavior, or are they behaving rationally, like a jaywalker?”

Using a survey methodology called snowball sampling, they reached 18,000 cyclists and then sliced the data to analyze lawbreaking by demographics like age, education, ethnicity, income, and even whether they own a car.

The Findings

The top-line finding? More than 70 percent of the time, when cyclists break traffic laws, they do so because they feel they need to in order to stay safe. Drivers, meanwhile, break traffic laws at an equal or even higher rate, but do so most often (77 percent of the time) to save time.

As you might imagine, young males are the most prolific scofflaws. But the data produces some heartening results: Most of us (85 percent) are either entirely law-abiding or engage only in minor infringements, which the authors define as those of minimal risk or potential conflict with other road users. An example might be rolling a four-way stop sign when no traffic is present (a maneuver called the Idaho Stop, which is actually legal in that state).

The trove of data includes tidbits like how recreational riders break traffic laws slightly more than those who ride for “utilitarian” purposes; unregistered voters are (narrowly) the most flagrant rulebreakers; and unsurprisingly, that those who admit they have almost no knowledge of road rules are by far the most reckless.

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But Marshall said that the most surprising thing his study suggests is that where someone lives matters more than who they are.

“Typically, you’d think that demographics would be important, and they were, but where they lived and rode mattered the most,” he says. What’s more, Marshall, who recently moved to Sydney, Australia for a six-month sabbatical to study traffic safety there, suspects that place can change a rider’s habits. “I’ve been riding a lot here and I’ve been behaving more like a Sydney rider,” he observes. “The social norms of place matter.”

How Trustworthy Are These Results?

Marshall cautions against reading the study results too finely. The survey method used, snowball sampling, is what’s called a non-probability sampling technique, essentially where initial survey respondents recruit more participants. It has its plusses and minuses.

Pro: It’s said to be better at producing high response rates and reaching populations that traditional survey methodologies may underrepresent, or at getting responses to socially awkward issues like getting people to admit they break the law.

Con: Non-probability sampling means that the respondent pool can be biased, because it can get skewed by prolific referrals of people with more social connections; it’s harder for researchers to extrapolate findings to the general population than they might via random sampling.

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But, Marshall points out, one of the key ways to combat snowball sampling’s drawbacks is a large study sample. Thanks to some media attention from the Washington Post and NPR when the study debuted, Marshall and his co-researchers compiled responses from a significant number of cyclists worldwide. And the survey itself was highly detailed, with over 100 questions, plus space for respondents to write further thoughts. That yielded even more data, which aren't fully represented here (another study based on the same data deals with how cyclists interact with each other when they encounter rude or illegal behavior; it’s published in the journal Transportation Research).

What's Next

Marshall said the next step is to examine qualitative responses, in part to test his hypothesis of how place matters. “It’ll be interesting to start to disaggregate by people and place, and explore the idea of 'If you move from Sydney to New York, do you start to behave more like a New Yorker.'”

But for now, he’s happy to report that evidence seems to bear out what cyclists have long known about our behavior: We’re not trying to be jerks; we just want to get home without getting hit.

Joe Lindsey Joe Lindsey is a longtime freelance journalist who writes about sports and outdoors, health and fitness, and science and tech, especially where the three elements in that Venn diagram overlap.

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