While distracted driving has commanded lots of attention (albeit not a commensurate amount of correction), another digital hazard — distracted walking — is on the rise, with sometimes disastrous consequences.
A study by Eric M. Lamberg and Lisa M. Muratori at Stony Brook University found that distracted walkers veer off course by as much as 61 percent while texting and walking.
We’ve all seen it, and often felt it, as people looking down to text, tweet, read or play games on their smartphones crash into us, typically as we walk in a straight line and they don’t.
Distracted walking is most common among millennials aged 18 to 34, but women 55 and older are most likely to suffer serious injuries, including broken bones, according to a 2013 study in Accident Analysis & Prevention.
Visits to emergency rooms for injuries involving distracted pedestrians on cellphones more than doubled between 2004 and 2010 and continues to grow. Among more than 1,000 people hospitalized after texting while walking, injuries included a shattered pelvis and injuries to the back, head and neck.
According to the National Safety Council, “the rise in cellphone-distracted walking injuries parallels the eightfold increase in cellphone use in the last 15 years.” Although the council found that 52 percent of distracted walking episodes occurred at home, the nationwide uptick in pedestrian deaths resulting from texting while walking has prompted the federal government to offer grants of $2 million to cities to combat distracted walking.
Accidents among digitally distracted walkers can be as serious as being hit by a vehicle, falling down a flight of stairs, tripping over a curb, walking into a glass door or falling into a fountain or swimming pool.
A Brooklyn acquaintance tripped, fell and fractured her ankle, not while talking on her cellphone but when she looked down to put the phone away. And a walking and texting woman in South Bend, Ind., fell off a pier into six feet of cold Lake Michigan water. Although embarrassed by the accident, the woman, who was rescued by a 19-year-old, said she hoped “it would make people understand that texting while walking can be a problem.”
Alas, most people seem to think the problem involves other people.
Read more of the original article in The New York Times.
