Pedestrian deaths are up 22 percent over 2014 levels according to a new report prepared for the Governor’s Highway Safety Association. The report’s author concluded that increased use of smartphones is to blame for the uptick.
Increased use of smartphones by whom? If you ask the Today Show, it’s distracted pedestrians who are to blame, a point they illustrated by showing a video clip of a person being struck by a driver while standing on the sidewalk. The whole segment seems utterly ridiculous, but then again, in a country where more than 90 percent of households own at least one vehicle and more than three-quarters of commuters drive to work, maybe the Today Show’s audience is actually buying it.
Here’s the thing: if you think distracted walking is what’s causing more people being killed, ask yourself what happens when two pedestrians collide. Usually nothing. But that’s not the case when you add cars and trucks to the mix. Motorized vehicles are an “amplifying agent in the coming together of a driver and a pedestrian”; when a pedestrian is struck with a vehicle, there’s a good chance the pedestrian is going to suffer — and the driver is going to walk away unscathed.
Certainly we all have a responsibility to ourselves and our families to avoid taking unnecessary risks with our own lives. But simply being aware of your surroundings isn’t much help when the driver of a two-ton vehicle jumps the curb and runs you over.
So how do you deal with the people who walk into the sides of Light Rail Vehicles or buses while walking and using their cell phones? Granted the illustration that this article mentions does not show the problem but it does exist. Pedestrians can do themselves great harm walking while distracted.
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What bogus reporting from the Today Show. If a driver veers onto the sidewalk and hits a pedestrian, it’s not the pedestrian who was distracted.
YES pedestrians are often at fault when they get hurt or killed in these collisions. Stop treating them like they don’t have the responsibility to keep their eyes and ears open.
It isn’t the pedestrian’s fault if a driver veers onto the sidewalk – but if said pedestrian is face-down looking at a cell phone at the time, it’s the pedestrian who’s removed any ability to react to the situation.
[…] CT Rep. John Zelinsky — Distracted pedestrians can’t really harm anybody but themselves, but that’s not stopping the 40-year veteran of Stamford’s Board of Representatives […]
[…] campaign stupid — if you think distracted walking is so dangerous, ask yourself what happens when you take cars out of the equation — it’s not even […]