Smartphone zombie Apocalypse is here! Pedestrian accident and death rates spike from walking and texting

The zombie apocalypse is here. All one need do is look outside to witness mindless bodies stumbling through the streets, staring into cellphones with a blind, catatonic gaze. While “petextrians” – people who text while walking – are a mild annoyance, a recent study found that cell phone distraction can have disastrous consequences even on the side of the road.

Distracted walking is most common among millennials between the ages of 18 and 34. However, women aged 55 and older are the most likely to suffer serious injuries – including broken bones – by texting and walking, according to a 2013 study in Accident Analysis and Prevent.⁽¹⁾

Furthermore, a separate study at Stony Brook University found that people wander off their intended course 61 percent of the time while texting and walking.⁽¹⁾

The fall and rise of pedestrian phone related deaths and injuries

Between the 1970s and early 2000s, pedestrian deaths steadily dropped to about 11 percent among all motor vehicle fatalities, according to a Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) report. Then the cell phone industry began to boom in the mid-nineties and early 2000s. Since 2009, pedestrian fatalities have increased, reaching 4,735 in 2013.⁽²⁾

Pedestrian phone related deaths have increased as well, jumping from less than 1 percent in 2004 to more than 3.5 percent in 2010, according to researchers at Ohio State University. In addition, the number of pedestrian phone related injuries has more than doubled since 2005, according to the report.⁽²⁾

The National Safety Council states “the rise in cellphone-distracted walking injuries parallels the eightfold increase in cellphone use in the last 15 years.” While the council found that 52 percent of distracted walking takes place at home, the nationwide spike in deaths caused by texting and walking has prompted the government to offer $2 million grants to cities to combat this minor epidemic.⁽¹⁾

Accidents provoked by texting and walking range from mild to extreme – like tripping over a curb vs. wandering into oncoming traffic. What’s ironic is that most people think this problem applies to others, but fail to cast the proverbial eye inward.

According to a survey released by the AAOS, among 6,000 people questioned, 74 percent said “other people” were usually distracted by their cell phones while walking, whereas a mere 29 percent said the same about themselves. About half the participants said they considered texting and walking dangerous.⁽³⁾

The myth of multitasking

The perception about the severity of the problem varies by generation as well. Approximately 70 percent of millennials consider texting and walking a serious problem compared to 81 percent of participants 35 years or older. Half the millennials questioned in the study considered distracted walking “embarrassing — in a funny way,” which suggests they don’t take the problem seriously.⁽¹⁾

This carefree perception about the dangers of distracted walking should come as no surprise for a generation that champions its ability to multitask. The problem is that multitasking is a fiction found nowhere but in the mind of millennials. Innumerable psychological experiments have shown that the number of items a person can juggle in their mind is seven, plus or minus two.⁽⁴⁾

While holding these thoughts, individuals aren’t actually performing two tasks at once. Rather, they are vacillating between different tasks, which makes them perform worse than they would have, had they followed a single thought through.

In an effort to raise public awareness, the orthopedic surgeons academy has issued a list of tips to help pedestrians stay safe this holiday season: When using headphones, keep your head up and the volume down; don’t jay walk; stay alert to surrounding people and objects; and step out of pedestrian traffic if you have to text.⁽¹⁾

The moral of the story? You can’t walk the walk while talking the talk.

Sources include:

(1) Blogs.NYTimes.com

(2) ABCNews.go.com

(3) Newsroom.Aaos.org

(4) Phys.org