Thursday, August 8, 2013

I See Dead Obliviots



According to the National Traffic Safety Administration, the number of pedestrian vs. car deaths has increased about 10% in the last few years.  

In Los Angeles, nearly half of all car-related deaths now are pedestrians. 

The probable reason?  "Distracted" pedestrians, which is a nicer way of saying idiots texting while talking on the phone, distracted by music, heads down, reading texts or sending them, oblivious to traffic and traffic signals.

London actually padded lampposts experimentally because texters were banging into them so often as they walked while texting.

Living Streets, a well-known charity dedicated to making cities more pedestrian-friendly, conducted an unscientific survey of 1,000 texting Brits and found that 1 in 10 — or, potentially, 6.5 million people nationwide — had suffered injuries while texting and walking.

As I have so often told my students, "Be different.  Think".












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1 comment:

  1. It's very hard to understand how someone could know the very obvious dangers of not looking where they're driving and then still decide to look away just to text. Never understood, that if the message is so important, why not just pull over.

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