From the BMJ press release:<\/p>\n
\nSmartphone texting is linked to compromised pedestrian safety<\/strong>, with higher rates of ‘near misses’ and failure to look left and right before crossing a road than either listening to music or talking on the phone, indicates a pooled analysis of the available evidence, published online in the journal\u00a0Injury Prevention<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n
\nBut much of the data is experimental and beset by quality issues, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions, caution the researchers, who call for a more thorough approach to exploring the impact of distracted pedestrian behaviours on crash risk.<\/p>\n
Worldwide, around 270,000 pedestrians die every year, accounting for around a fifth of all road traffic deaths.<\/p>\n
‘Pedestrian distraction’ has become a recognised safety issue as more and more people use their smartphones or hand held devices while walking on the pavement and crossing roads.<\/p>\n
To try and gauge the potential impact on road safety of hand-held\/hands-free device activities, including talking on the phone, text messaging, browsing and listening to music, the researchers looked for published evidence.<\/p>\n
From among 33 relevant studies, they pooled the data from 14 (involving 872 people) and systematically reviewed the data from another eight.<\/p>\n
They looked specifically at: time taken to start walking or begin crossing the road; missed opportunities to cross safely; time taken to cross the road; looking left and right before or during crossing; and collisions and close calls with other pedestrians and vehicles.<\/p>\n
The pooled data analysis showed that listening to music wasn’t associated with any heightened risk of potentially harmful pedestrian behaviours.<\/p>\n
Talking on the phone was associated with a small increase in the time taken to start crossing the road and slightly more missed opportunities to cross the road safely.<\/p>\n
Text messaging emerged as the potentially most harmful behaviour<\/strong>. It was associated with significantly lower rates of looking left and right right before and\/or while crossing the road, and with moderately increased rates of collisions and close calls with other pedestrians or vehicles.<\/p>\n
It also affected the time taken to cross a road and missed opportunities to cross safely, but to a lesser extent.<\/p>\n
The review of the eight observational studies revealed that the percentage of pedestrians who were distracted ranged from 12 to 45%, and that behaviours were influenced by several factors, including gender, time of day, solo or group crossing, and walking speed.<\/p>\n
The researchers acknowledge “a variety of study quality issues” which limit the generalisability of the findings.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, they point out: “Given the ubiquity of smartphones, social media, apps, digital video and streaming music, which has infiltrated most aspects of daily life, distracted walking and street cross will be a road safety issue for the foreseeable future.”<\/p>\n
And as signage and public awareness campaigns don’t seem to alter pedestrian behaviour, “Establishing the relationship between distracted walking behaviour and crash risk is an essential research need,” they conclude.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From the BMJ press release: Smartphone texting is linked to compromised pedestrian safety, with higher rates of ‘near misses’ and failure to look left and right before crossing a road… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":21089,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[526],"tags":[20,12,219,259,310],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31046"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31046"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31090,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31046\/revisions\/31090"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}