Mimicry and stop sign compliance

Many road-users fail to comply with the stop sign rule, potentially increasing the chance of accidents at junctions. Within a social-cognitive framework, we investigated whether the behaviour of traffic in front influences road-user's stop sign compliance, focussing in particular on whether the notion of mimicry is useful in explaining rates of stop sign dissent. In the absence of conflicting traffic, road-users were significantly (p = .012, Φ = 0.083) less likely to stop if traffic in front did not stop (of n = 535, 11% stopped), compared to when there was no traffic in front (of n = 369, 16.8% stopped). However, there was no evidence of mimicry when traffic in front did stop (19.3% stopped), compared to when no vehicle was in front (16.8% stopped) (p = .720, Φ = 0.033). If road-users mimic negative behaviours rather than positive ones, over time it is likely that the rate of non-compliance will increase. The findings and directions for future research are discussed.