As a society, we now spend almost half of our waking hours looking at screens, according to numerous reports. People have admitted to using their smartphone in meetings, on the toilet and even during sex. And according to a 2013 research report compiled by Liberty Mutual Insurance, 70 percent of people in the United States admit to texting and walking.
“So much attention has been paid, and rightly so, to distracted driving that we have ignored the fact that distracted walking and crossing can be just as risky,” David Melton, a driving safety expert with Liberty Mutual, wrote in the report.
YouTube is home to thousands of compilation videos of epic texting-and-walking fails. Like the people who slam into glass doors, closed elevators and parked cars. The zombies who head-butt streetlight poles and phone booths. Or the office workers who stumble down a flight of stairs, or feel the other side of a cubicle wall. And the woman in a mall who was so glued to her phone that she fell into a working water fountain.
While it’s easy to LOL at these videos, texting and walking is inconceivably rude. The last few benevolent human beings on earth who are just trying to make it down the street are forced to move out of the way for thousands of inconsiderate people — all because we can’t put our phone away for 15 seconds?
Beyond the thoughtlessness of walking texters, there are the safety problems. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, distracted pedestrians are involved in thousands of accidents and even fatalities each year. Dr. Dietrich Jehle, a professor of emergency medicine at the University at Buffalo in New York, estimates that of those tens of thousands of pedestrian-related emergency room visits, 10 percent are a result of texting while walking. People end up with broken legs and concussions, to name a few serious injuries.
This year, officials in the city of Chongqing, China, created a 100-foot stretch of pavement with pictures of cellphones painted on the ground, that it designated as a walking while texting pathway. While people in the United States seemed to look across the pond with envy at this advancement, officials in China said the whole point of the exercise was to remind people that “it is best not to play with your phone while walking.”
If you’re one of the people who admit to texting and walking but pride yourself on being an expert at this task, there is lot of research that shows you’re actually not.
A study published earlier this year in the medical journal PLOS One found that walking and using your smartphone at the same time affects people’s posture and balance, causing them to swerve and walk slower. (In other words, you look like a person who’s had six too many drinks.) As a result, researchers found, texting and walking can cause accidents, “including falls, trips and collisions with obstacles or other individuals.”
Jack Nasar, an Ohio State University professor, led a study that found the number of people who end up in emergency rooms each year due to cellphone-related injuries more than doubled from 2005 to 2010. Mr. Nasar also found that those most likely to end up harmed are actually the youngest, with people between the ages of 16 and 25 being injured the most.
Often, in the most dangerous incidents, people walk in front of moving cars, causing serious injuries. Mr. Nasar said that thousands of people are treated in emergency rooms every year for accidents related to texting and walking, many ending up with broken bones.
So as this year ends, after a countdown to “Auld Lang Syne,” in addition to that promise you will get yourself to eat healthier, start going to the gym and save your pennies, make 2015 the year to stop texting and walking, too.
Read the New York Times original story.
