Texting while walking not much of a danger in NYC, says new city study

A pedestrian crossing street while looking at her cellphone. (AS photo/Getty Images/iStockphoto)

You’re probably not going to die if you walk down a New York City street looking at your cell phone.

NYdailynews - continues

 

Oh, I thought there would be some reply that counters this

Well here's another article that pretty much goes with this one. It reads in part;

But the larger message is clear: Drivers are to blame, and roadways must be made safe so that their errors and speeding do not result in death.

StreetBlogNYC - continues

 

Some of the things you post either affect all of American society, or the proposed remedy to the issue at hand will affect all of American society. Others I or others might find personally interesting, but this one looks to be a regional story. If you're not living in NYC or somewhere similar, it might not be very interesting.

NYC is likely to have very different conditions of population density, behavior of pedestrians and drivers, numbers of cars on the road, access to mass transit, etc, compared to rural or suburban living. Just because of that, I'm not going to try and tell them how they should live.

One suggestion, though. If you're really interested in discussing this or any other idea, spend some time explaining your own opinion and how it was reached. Posting a link leaves others arguing with the author of the original article, who is almost certainly not reading here.

 

I'm a study of one.
But I think walking while texting is always....suspect and inclined to be problematic, if not dangerous...all the time.

Of course correctly and rightly we put the onus of safety responsibility on the drivers of vehicles NOT to hit pedestrians, texting while walking or otherwise. How many uncountable incidents have been averted and are averted everyday because "we" as drivers compensate by realizing that so many pedestrians aren't aware of their immediate surroundings because they are distracted by texting or some other portable device interaction?

Basically, we do correctly say "Don't Text and Drive".
We don't often say "Don't Walk and Text".

But distraction is distraction...PERIOD.

Parents celebrate when a baby toddler takes it's first step. Walking is one of the first fundamental skills of survival all animals on this planet embrace.
In short, we are good at it. It's in our DNA.

But I don't know how any study anywhere would conclude that being out in the world "distracted" and moving through it wouldn't be far less safe, than being aware of the environment in which you are passing through?

Lions, Zebra's Giraffes,,,,,they very quickly learn to stand, move and walk. It's paramount to their survival chances in a predatory environment. They learn to be aware of their surroundings.

I guess as humans, we don't think those rules apply to us. Even though we are moving through an environment filled with metal moving predators that if we aren't paying attention can easily kill us.

 

Granted NYC is not a template for the rest of the cities in the world, but having more people out in the public and walking, like NYC has, is a great benefit for the typical distracted millennial (or younger) out in public. Maybe that had something to do with the study? In the example above, it looks like the woman isn't listening on ear buds. So there is some attention given to crossing the street. Still she isn't in control of 2 tons plus of steel and plastics that can hurt someone else.