If you walk and use a cell phone, watch out
The number of ER visits to treat injuries due to distracted walking is on the rise
Published 6:30 am, Sunday, January 17, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO — On that day last December, visibility was good. The sidewalk was not under repair. As she walked, Tiffany Briggs, 25, was talking to her grandmother on her cell phone, lost in conversation.
“I ran into a truck,” Briggs said. It was parked in a driveway.
Distracted driving has gained much attention because of the inflated crash risk posed by motorists using cell phones to talk and text.
But there is another growing problem caused by lower-stakes multitasking — distracted walking — which combines a pedestrian, an electronic device and an unseen crack in the sidewalk, the stop-sign pole, a toy on the living room floor or a parked (or even moving) car.
The era of the mobile gadget is making mobility that much more perilous, particularly on crowded streets and in downtown areas where multiple multitaskers veer and swerve and walk to the beat of their own devices.
Most times, the mishaps that befall the distracted walker are minor, like the lightly dinged head and broken fingernail that Briggs suffered, a jammed digit or a sprained ankle or, at least, a nasty case of hurt pride. But the injuries can be serious — and they are on the rise.
Slightly more than 1,000 pedestrians visited emergency rooms in 2008 because they got distracted and tripped, fell or ran into something while talking or texting on a cell phone. That was twice the number from 2007, which had nearly doubled from 2006, according to a study by Ohio State University, which says it is the first to estimate such accidents.
“It's the tip of the iceberg,” said Jack Nasar, a professor of city and regional planning at Ohio State, noting that the number of mishaps is probably much higher considering that most of the injuries are not severe enough to require a hospital visit. What is more, he said, texting is rising sharply and devices like the iPhone have thousands of new, engaging applications to preoccupy phone users.
More young people hurt
Examples include a 16-year-old boy who walked into a telephone pole while texting and suffered a concussion; a 28-year-old man who tripped and fractured a finger on the hand gripping his cell phone; and a 68-year-old man who fell off the porch while talking on a cell phone, spraining a thumb and an ankle and causing dizziness.
Young people injured themselves more often. About half the visits Troyer studied were by people under 30, and a quarter were 16 to 20 years old. But more than a quarter were 41 to 60 years old.
Pedestrians, like drivers, have long been distracted by myriad tasks, like snacking or reading on the go. But the ubiquity and constant interaction associated with electronic devices has made single-tasking seem boring or even unproductive.
Researchers are beginning to study the impact of constant multitasking, whether behind a desk or the wheel or on foot. It might stand to reason that someone looking at a phone to read a message would misstep, but the researchers are finding that just talking on a phone takes a considerable toll on cognition and awareness.
Look out for the clown!
Sometimes, pedestrians using phones do not notice objects or people right in front of them — even a clown on a unicycle. That was the finding of a recent study by a psychology professor, Ira Hyman, and his students in Bellingham, Wash.
One student dressed as a clown and unicycled around a central square on the Western Washington University campus. About half the people walking in the square by themselves said they had seen the clown, and the number was slightly higher for people walking in pairs. But only 25 percent of people talking on a cell phone said they had, Hyman said.
He said the term applied to such preoccupation is “inattention blindness,” meaning a person can be looking at an object but fail to register it or process what it is.
Particularly fascinating, Hyman said, is that people walking in pairs were more than twice as likely to see the clown as were people talking on a cell phone, suggesting that just having a conversation is not to blame.
One explanation is that a cell phone conversation taxes not just auditory resources in the brain but also visual functions, said Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco. That combination, he said, creates visual imagery related to the conversation that override or obscure the processing of real images.
By comparison, walking and chewing gum is a snap.
“Walking and chewing are repetitive, well-practiced tasks that become automatic,” Gazzaley explained. “They don't compete for resources like texting and walking.”