THEY鈥橰E noisy, get in your way and change direction unpredictably. As if that weren鈥檛 enough, pedestrians chatting on a cellphone are also more likely to get knocked down by a bus.
It is well known that people who use their cellphones while driving increase their risk of having an accident, so Jack Nasar of Ohio State University, Columbus, and his colleagues decided to find out whether the same applied to those on foot. They posted observers at three busy road crossings near his campus and asked them to note pedestrians鈥� risky roadside behaviour and what portable technology they were using.
After watching 127 people, they found that 48 per cent of cellphone users crossed the road in front of approaching cars 鈥� causing some drivers to make emergency stops 鈥� compared with 25 per cent of those not using gadgets.
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Surprisingly, just 16 per cent of iPod users took that same risk 鈥� perhaps because, knowing they couldn鈥檛 hear oncoming traffic, they stopped to look, says Nasar.
鈥淧eople get sucked into the conversation and pay less and less attention to the road,鈥� says Roger Vincent of the UK鈥檚 Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. The results are expected to be published in Accident Analysis and Prevention.
