We all know that it is dangerous to drive while calling or texting in mobile. Well, a new study has revealed that texting while walking is more dangerous than texting behind the steering wheel. The new study has been published in Injury Prevention Journal, which says that smart phone texting is linked to pedestrian safety with high rates of “near misses”.
With the infiltration of social media apps, streaming music and digital video in daily life has led to distracted walking and crossing the street, said the researchers from the University of Calgary, Canada. The study says that about 270,000 pedestrians die every year, which is about a fifth of road accident deaths in the world. And all this, the researchers say was because of pedestrian distraction because of the use of smart phones or other hand held devices.
The researchers came to the conclusion using published evidence. From the 33 relevant studies, the researchers pooled data from 14 studies and reviewed the data from another eight. They had looked into various aspects of walking and texting. They had looked into the time taken by a pedestrian to start crossing the road and how they missed the opportunity to cross the road safely and the time taken to cross the road. They also looked into collisions with other pedestrians and vehicles.
Meanwhile, talking on phone was related to a small increase in the time taken to cross the road and slightly missed opportunities in road safety. However, the researchers point out that text messaging was more dangerous and a harmful behaviour. Texting associated with lower rates of looking left or right while passing the traffic signals. Apart from this, the pedestrians also take more time to walk through the crossings and also miss the opportunities to walk safely, the study said.
