Question: Can walking and talking on a cell phone kill you?
A: No. Are you kidding?
B: I don't know but I see people not paying attention all the time. It is an accident waiting to happen.
C: No. I think cell phones are an absolute necessity in this day and age and if there is some risk it is small and worth it.
D: Yes, definitely. Walking and talking can be dangerous.
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Answer - D: Yes, definitely. Walking and talking can be dangerous.
ReplyDeleteFrom NPR -
Lisa Carolyn Moran, 20, a University of North Carolina exchange student from Scotland, was listening to an iPod while jogging when she stepped into the path of a bus in Chapel Hill last May.
Joshua Phillips White, 16, was wearing earphones and walking on a train track in Cramerton, N.C., last November when a freight train hit him from behind, killing him; police said he apparently didn't hear the locomotive approaching.
Alan Eaton-Chandler, 17, was killed under the same circumstances just last Tuesday when he was hit by an Amtrak train in Comstock Township, Mich.
And Vicky Baker, 39, was talking on her cell phone when she was struck and killed by a train in Albertville, Ala., in December.
....
Richard Wener, a professor of environmental psychology at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, says the emerging body of research on distracted drivers led him and two colleagues to look at pedestrians. They found the same relationship between inattention and risk, but a greater vulnerability.
Wener has collaborated on several studies led by Jack Nasar, an Ohio State University professor of city and regional planning. One study of 127 pedestrians on that university's campus showed that 48 percent of cell phone users stepped into a crosswalk as a car approached. That's a much higher rate of unsafe behavior than was demonstrated by pedestrians without electronics (25 percent) or iPod users (16 percent). Results were published last year in the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention.
I missed that story but it doesn't surprise me.
ReplyDelete