Last year, The Behavioural Architects set out to tackle the increasing tension and veritable ‘war’ between cyclists and motorists on London’s streets. We have leveraged our expertise in behavioural science to:
understand behaviour by investigating the conscious and unconscious behavioural influences of cyclists and motorists, and
design a simple and low cost intervention to reinforce positive cycling behaviour, challenge motorists’ view that most cyclists jump lights and decrease red light jumping.
After conducting qualitative research on the behaviour of cyclists and motorists, we created posters that communicated to motorists that the majority of cyclists wait at red lights. This challenged the misperception that most cyclists are breaking the law.
The results of our exploratory study are now published by Road Safety GB, the UK’s national road safety organisation. Our intervention successfully decreased rush hour red light jumping behaviour by 21.4% and 14.5% respectively across the two London junctions.
These results reveal the potential power of a simple, inexpensive intervention based on insights from behavioural science