Rescue!

About a month ago, I saw this article in the Daily Mail about an experiment that is being conducted in London. The purpose? To reduce the number of injuries suffered by inattentive cell phone users when they bump into other pedestrians and “street furniture,” like lampposts and the like. Why is this needed? Because:

Around one in ten careless Brits has suffered a “walk ‘n text” street injury in the past year...

The 6.6 million accidents have caused injuries ranging from mild knocks and embarrassing cuts and bruises through to broken noses, cheekbones and even a fractured skull.

Almost two thirds --- 62 percent --- of Brits concentrate so hard while texting that they lose their peripheral vision, researchers found.

- snip –

Britain’s 48 million mobile users together send 4.7 million texts an hour.

Wow! That’s a lot of distracted people. And what does this experiment look like?



I’m sorry to be insensitive, but I can’t help but giggle at this exercise in rescuing folks from their own distractions. I have a more cost-effective solution: put the phone away.