Honolulu to impose fines for usage while walking
You see them everywhere: people walking with their eyes glued to their mobile phone screens on busy streets. But walking and texting can be dangerous — and cities in the United States and Europe have begun to do something about it.
Honolulu has passed a law, which will take effect Wednesday, that allows the police to fine pedestrians up to $35 for viewing their electronic devices while crossing streets in the city and surrounding county. Honolulu is thought to be the first major city to enact such a ban.
“This is really milestone legislation that sets the bar high for safety,” said Brandon Elefante, the City Council member who proposed the bill. Pedestrians, he said, will share the responsibility for their safety with motorists.
In the United States, pedestrian deaths in 2016 spiked 9 percent from the year before, rising to 5,987, the highest toll on American roads since 1990, according to federal data. One reason may be the sharp rise in smartphone use, “a frequent source of mental and visual distraction” for both drivers and walkers, a report by the Governors Highway Safety Association found.
“I’m guilty myself,” said Charles Chan Massey, chief executive of Synaxis Meetings & Events, a management firm, who uses the time walking to and from meetings and business lunches to catch up on calls, texts and emails.
“A lot of people do it; they know it’s risky and do it anyway. They convince themselves that ‘this text is important,”’ he said. “It’s something we need to be aware of.”
There is a dearth of data directly linking distracted walking to pedestrian injuries and deaths, but it seems to be a global problem, too. Preliminary studies “give a hint to unsafe behavior,” said Dr. Etienne Krug, director of the Department for Management of Noncommunicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention at the World Health Organization.
People who text and walk, for example, are nearly four times as likely to engage in at least one dangerous action, like jaywalking or not looking both ways, and take 18 percent more time to cross a street than undistracted pedestrians. Solutions, Krug said, are “hard to legislate and even harder to enforce.”
Apple began accepting early orders for its iPhone X and shipping times quickly lengthened to as much as five weeks in the U.S., signaling supplies will likely remain tight as the new device goes on sale Nov. 3.
Hong Kong appeared to sell out less than half an hour after purchases commenced in the mid-afternoon, as the online store for the city of seven million showed both models of the gadget to be “currently unavailable.”
The device also sold out via Apple’s website within minutes in the U.K. By midmorning, customers trying to pre-order the phone — which will cost British consumers $1,307 for the entry-level model — were being told they would have to wait 4-6 weeks for availability.
A spokeswoman for Apple didn’t immediately respond with a comment on whether the company expected wait times to decrease.
Shares of Apple in New York rose just under 1 percent in pre-market trading.
Those who ordered the phone in the first few minutes after the clock struck midnight in California will get their phones next Friday. And Apple also sets inventory aside for those buying at their physical stores. But its online stores from Europe to Asia showed waits of several weeks. In markets including Japan, Australia, and China, shipping times extended to as much as five or six weeks, while they reached three to four in Europe. For comparison, an iPhone 8 ordered in the U.S. will be delivered by next week, according to Apple’s online store.
Outside of Apple’s own channels however, some major stockists, including the U.K.’s Carphone Warehouse, were listing the iPhone X as available for delivery Nov. 3. — the day of release.
Shipping times of several weeks for major new Apple devices are common. The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, launched in 2014 and the previous end-to-end iPhone overhaul, saw shipments in three to four weeks in the hours after becoming available to pre-order. Apple typically takes a few weeks or months to reach a balance of supply and demand for major new iPhone launches, and the 8’s availability just weeks after its introduction may be a result of users waiting for the higher-end iPhone X.
The iPhone X has an OLED screen with slimmer bezels, matching recent designs from Samsung, in addition to a unique facial recognition scanner for unlocking the phone in lieu of a fingerprint. Apple introduced the device alongside the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus in September.