Walking, talking raising the risk of being hit in traffic
The amount of injuries related to cellphone use is skyrocketing, a study finds. reports.
In a world of distracted drivers, one scientist watches distracted pedestrians — minds on their cellphone chatter, walking into traffic, winding up in hospital.
And professor Jack Nasar says their numbers are racing upward.
More than 1,500 pedestrians were estimated to be treated in U.S. emergency rooms in 2010 for injuries related to using a cellphone while walking, says Nasar. He teaches city and regional planning at Ohio State University. That’s more than double the number found in a 2005 survey. And he suspects actual numbers are much higher than his nationwide U.S. survey found because many accidents go unreported.
“If current trends continue, I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of injuries to pedestrians caused by cellphones doubles again between 2010 and 2015,” he said.
The trend is the smart phone. Old cellphones were used for talking and text messages. New phones have so many more functions that they distract us with a dizzying array of things that are far more fun than looking where we are going.
Still, however, simple talking is a threat. In fact, the study found that most young people (most of the injured were aged 24 or under) are hurt while talking, not texting or browsing the Internet.
In 2008, Nasar ran an experiment asking people with and without cellphones to walk around a tricky course. He found that “mobile phone users crossed unsafely into oncoming traffic significantly more” than those without phones. These pedestrians can’t think about safety and their phone call at the same time, he said. They look straight ahead, but they don’t see.
Nasar’s new study appears in the August 2013 issue of a health journal called Accident Analysis and Prevention. And he found some cases of walkers who were amazingly unaware of their surroundings.
One 14-year-old boy who was walking and talking on a cellphone fell more than two metres off a bridge and hurt his chest and shoulders landing on the rocks below. He never saw the accident coming.
A 23-year-old man who was hit by a car had somehow taken a wrong turn and was strolling along the centre line of the road, chatting all the way. He injured his hip but lived to tell about it.
Men were slightly more likely (53 per cent) to be hurt than women.
Meanwhile, the total number of pedestrians estimated to be treated in emergency rooms dropped from 97,000 in 2004 to 41,000 in 2010.
“As more people get cellphones and spend more time using them, the number of injuries is likely to increase as well. Now people are playing games and using social media on their phones, too,” Nasar said.
“Parents already teach their children to look both ways when crossing the street. They should also teach them to put away their cellphone when walking.”