Sustainability 2023, 15, 61. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15010061 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Article 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 Grupo de Investigación SARACS, SEPI-ESIME, Zac., Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico City 07738, Mexico * Correspondence: jrsantosr@hotmail.com or jsantosr@ipn.mx 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 metropol- itan 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) re- garding the use of mobile phones for talking/texting (along with social network and gender) as pre- dictors 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 1. Introduction Cycling may be regarded as the most important mode of nonmotorized transport. Moreover, cycling is not expensive and contributes to a reduction in pollution emissions and energy consumption compared to motorized transport systems [1–5]. However, the number of cyclist fatalities has increased, as has the number of serious injuries due to an increased number of single-bicycle crashes (SBCs) [2,3,5]. In the present study, the widely used definition of SBCs was adopted, i.e., falls or obstacle collisions (all crash types in which only the cyclist is involved, including talking to other cyclists; in the subsequent sections, the terms “crash/fall” and “fall/crash” are used). The crash type was character- ized in relation to [5] physical infrastructure (road type and surface), cyclists’ riding be- havior (or unsafe acts, e.g., doing a “wheelie”), bicycle malfunction, and others (e.g., cy- clists’ age and gender). The present study addresses riders’ unsafe acts while cycling by considering the use of a mobile phone (either talking or texting messages), listening to music, smoking, talking to other cyclists, and riding without holding the handlebars. According to [6], “unsafe acts” refer to errors and procedural violations arising “from aberrant mental processes such as forgetfulness, inattention, poor motivation, carelessness, negligence, and reckless- ness”; in the present work, “unsafe acts” and “unsafe behavior” are used interchangeably. Citation: Santos-Reyes, J.; Pastenes-Medina, Y.; Padilla-Pérez, D. The Use of Mobile Phone and Other Unsafe Behavior While Cycling in the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City. Sustainability 2023, 15, 61. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su15010061 Academic Editors: Kyandoghere Kyamakya, Jacek Oskarbski and Miroslava Mikušová Received: 14 October 2022 Revised: 4 December 2022 Accepted: 14 December 2022 Published: 21 December 2022 Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Li- censee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and con- ditions of the Creative Commons At- tribution (CC BY) license (https://cre- ativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).