Distracted Walking, Cycling, and Driving

[danbrotherston]

It's an opinion backed up by physics, statistics, and even your anecdote.  Stats show walking injuries, unlike vehicle collisions, have not gone up with mobile phone use. Physics dictates I am more able to maintain situational awareness because the flow of information is much slower, and physics also dictates the possibility of harm is vastly lower. As for your anecdote, what happened when the person walked into you, they were embarrassed, and you were annoyed, as opposed to you being hospitalized or worse, if they were in a car.

I don't know how "walking injuries" are counted.

But certainly one of the key risks of distracted walking is that of a pedestrian-motor vehicle collision. A person who is not aware of his or her surroundings may walk into the way of an approaching motor vehicle. Yes, it's only injuring the pedestrian, but that's still an injury, or worse.

They are definitely harder to study than vehicle injuries which are relatively well documented.  But various studies have investigated.

Of course, MVC injuries related to distracted pedestrians are easy to study and it's very clear those have not risen as a result of distracted walking.  The main reason is even a distracted pedestrian will be aware they are stepping off a curb. And distracted or not, most peds with the right of way don't look for or expect to get run over. This is where most collisions occur.

Interesting, the most notable distracted walking ban is in Honolulu, and the politicians who voted for it cited the high number of pedestrians hit while they have the right of way in a crosswalk.  Their argument was, those peds must be distracted, who cares about the drivers who hit a ped with the right of way.

It is extremely clear the issue of distracted walking is moral panic and nothing more.  Or worse, it's moral panic being used to distract away from real issues of dangerous driving.