According to Hudson Valley NY's
Daily Freeman, 1,000 pedestrians got injured in the USA in 2008 due to text-message distractions while walking. The high injury rate is double the 2007 figures, and quadruple the 2006 figures.
This confirms a basic premise that NY personal injury lawyers have articulated: More Technology = More Distractions = More Injuries.
We asked a a number of text-walkers to account for the phenomenon. The interviewee simply replied, "I am basically offloading my brain to all my gadgets." The approach seems to be widespread relaity. GPS tells a driver where to turn. Car-mounted safety systems, such as AWAX, tell drivers to be careful of nearby vehicles. MP3 stereos pump tunes into pedestrian ears, and cellphones and PDA stream one-liners among social networks of friends. Bottom line: People pay less attention to others within close proxmity, and more to distant virtual connections. Pardon our techno-cynicism, but we just want to prevent unnecesary personal injuries such as
slip and falls and car accidents. So please put down that cell phone while walking.
