People using smartphones while walkingPeople using phones while walking
Safety hazards have been noted due to pedestrians walking slowly and without attention to their surroundings because they are focused upon their smartphones. Texting pedestrians may trip over curbs, walk out in front of cars and bump into other walkers. The field of vision of a smartphone user is estimated to be just 5% of a normal pedestrian's.[1]
Some cities have taken design measures to make the streets safer for inattentive pedestrians, including lights embedded in pavements, and dedicated lanes for smartphone-using pedestrians to use.
The pejorative term smartphone zombie has been used to describe inattentive phone users;[2] this phrase was sometimes blended to smombie in German[3] and has seen some English usage.[4] In Hong Kong such phone users are called dai tau juk ("the head-down tribe").[5] A 2017 review considered the popular culture term in regards to the medical diagnoses of internet addiction disorder and other forms of digital media overuse.[6]
In March 2023, Accident Analysis & Prevention published a systematic review of 47 samples across 45 studies investigating associations between problematic mobile phone use and road safety outcomes (including 32 samples of drivers, 9 samples of pedestrians, 5 samples with road use type unspecified, and 1 sample of motorcyclists and bicyclists) that found that problematic mobile phone use was associated with greater risk of simultaneous mobile phone use and road use and risk of vehicle collisions and pedestrian collisions or falls.[7]
In Chongqing, China, the government constructed a dedicated smartphone-sidewalk in 2014, separating the phone users and the non-phone users.[8][9][10] A similar scheme was introduced in Antwerp the following year.[11]
In Augsburg, Bodegraven and Cologne, ground-level traffic lights embedded in the pavement have been introduced so that they are more visible to preoccupied pedestrians,[12][13] while traffic signals at an intersection in Zagreb cast the red light downwards, producing glare on smartphone screens.[14]
In Seoul, warning signs have been placed on the pavement at dangerous intersections following over a thousand road accidents caused by smartphones in South Korea in 2014.[15] The city has also implemented traffic lights embedded to the ground to pass the indication to the pedestrian even he is fully immersed to his smartphone experience.
Seoul pavement light in green
Seoul pavement light in green, close up
Seoul pavement light in red
Seoul pavement light in red, close up
Phone technology
An app which uses the phone's camera to make the screen appear transparent can be used to provide some warning of hazards.[16]
Legal measures
In October 2017, the City of Honolulu, Hawaii introduced a measure to fine pedestrians looking at smartphones while crossing the road.[17] In 2019, China introduced penalties for "activities affecting other vehicles or pedestrians" and a woman was fined 10 yuan in Wenzhou.[18]
In fiction
Science fiction author Ray Bradbury wrote about people being distracted by miniaturised technology in the 1950s, in his stories such as The Pedestrian and Fahrenheit 451.[19][20][21] He wrote in 1958 of observing a couple walking in Beverly Hills, the woman listening to a small transistor radio "oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleepwalking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there".[22]
^Duke, Éilish; Montag, Christian (2017), Montag, Christian; Reuter, Martin (eds.), "Smartphone Addiction and Beyond: Initial Insights on an Emerging Research Topic and Its Relationship to Internet Addiction", Internet Addiction: Neuroscientific Approaches and Therapeutical Implications Including Smartphone Addiction, Studies in Neuroscience, Psychology and Behavioral Economics, Springer International Publishing, pp. 359–372, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-46276-9_21, ISBN9783319462769
