Get out of the way for charedim
We needed a study to tell us this?!
Business Day:
..The New Scientist magazine recently reported a study conducted by Tova Rosenbloom of Bar-Ilan University that suggests devout Orthodox Jews are three times as likely to be risk-taking pedestrians than their neighbours in secular communities.
According to the magazine, Rosenbloom began to suspect that religious beliefs might play a role after hearing complaints about pedestrian behaviour in the ultraorthodox community of Bnei-Brak. To find out more, she and her colleagues watched more than1000 pedestrians at two busy intersections, one in Bnei-Brak and the other in a largely secular city. They totted up the number of times a pedestrian either jaywalked, walked on the road as opposed to the footpath, crossed without looking for traffic or crossed without holding an accompanying child’s hand.
They found the inhabitants of Bnei-Brak were three times more likely than the others to break these rules.
Rossenbloom thinks an ultraorthodox faith might contribute to this cavalier behaviour by making people respect religious more than state-law. However, she did not rule out the possibility, that religious people might simply have less fear of death....
Business Day:
..The New Scientist magazine recently reported a study conducted by Tova Rosenbloom of Bar-Ilan University that suggests devout Orthodox Jews are three times as likely to be risk-taking pedestrians than their neighbours in secular communities.
According to the magazine, Rosenbloom began to suspect that religious beliefs might play a role after hearing complaints about pedestrian behaviour in the ultraorthodox community of Bnei-Brak. To find out more, she and her colleagues watched more than1000 pedestrians at two busy intersections, one in Bnei-Brak and the other in a largely secular city. They totted up the number of times a pedestrian either jaywalked, walked on the road as opposed to the footpath, crossed without looking for traffic or crossed without holding an accompanying child’s hand.
They found the inhabitants of Bnei-Brak were three times more likely than the others to break these rules.
Rossenbloom thinks an ultraorthodox faith might contribute to this cavalier behaviour by making people respect religious more than state-law. However, she did not rule out the possibility, that religious people might simply have less fear of death....
posted by Yeshiva Orthodoxy
at 10:07 PM
5 Comments:
Religous jews have purpose in their lives, busier lives larger families. (most of them) Therefore they are in a bigger rush, and might not be as carefull.
I tend to believe the first reason given in the articlte.
When it comes to going up against the system (such as with serious illnesses) , people are very makpid on v'nishmartem. But there seems to be a deep need not to follow the rules that apply to everyone else.
Similarly, "ultraorthodox" tend to be less careful regarding seat belts and car seats than the public at large.
She's just finding this out now! When I lived in Kew Garden Hillsas a bochur over 15 years ago, my next door neighbor - a Puerto Rican young man - asked me if all orthodox Jews believed they had "guardian angels" watching them as they crossed the street, because they seemed to never pay attention to the traffic. I just smiled and shrugged. "Ki malachov y'tzaveh....."
If you have ever driven through a Mexican neighborhood in the U.S., you will see the same behavior patterns as an Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.
The reasons, I suspect, have nothing to do with less fear of death, and more to do with attitude towards the rule of law.
You don't see the same behavior patterns in my more Modern neighborhood as you do in more Charedi neighborhoods.
Either less fear of death or less room on the sidewalk.
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