A Penn State study shows that college students find texting irresistible even at the most inappropriate situation.
IN PHOTO: A student from the General Yermolov Cadet School plays with her mobile phone during a two-day field exercise near the village of Sengileyevskoye, just outside the south Russian city of Stavropol April 13, 2014. The General Yermolov Cadet School in the southern Russian city of Stavropol is a state-run institution that teaches military and patriotic classes in addition to a normal syllabus. The school allows its pupils to take part in field-training trips, during which they spend time at a base and undergo physical drills and weapons training. The outings are seen as a treat for students, and those with bad grades are not allowed to go. The school is named after the Russian imperial general Alexei Yermolov and many of its students are from military backgrounds. Picture taken April 13, 2014. Reuters/Eduard Korniyenko

The city of Antwerp in Belgium has marked several lanes as the ‘text walking lanes’ to put smartphone addicts on the right track and to make it convenient for other pedestrians who often come across people not able to get their eyes off their smartphones, according to reports.

The concept has been introduced earlier in Washington DC and Chongqing in China and now a number of Antwerp’s busiest shopping streets have got ‘text walking lanes’, reports Digital Trends. Mlab, a smartphone company engineered this concept and as claimed by the company, the new signage aims to reduce phone damage caused due to distracted pedestrians colliding with each other, reports London Evening Standard.

“Everyone textwalks. You probably walk through the streets while texting or sending Whatsapp messages to your friends and don’t really pay attention to your surroundings, only to whatever is happening on your screen,” a report on Metro quoted an Mlab Spokeswoman, as saying. The spokeswoman explained Metro, “This causes collisions with poles or other pedestrians. You could, unknowingly, even be endangering your own life while you ‘textwalk’ when you cross the street without looking up.”

Mlab repairs up to 35,000 mobiles per day, and the company says that loads of those breaks are caused by collisions while text-walking, reports Metro.

According to US ER data via research firm Pew, pedestrian injuries caused due to handset distraction has increased by 35 percent in the last five years. The report mentions, in order to cut down the number of accidents caused due to distracted walking, states such as New Jersey and Utah have imposed on wandering texters who put themselves in dangerous situations. Besides that, to ensure safety, speed limits were reduced last year in parts of New York City, so that drivers can avoid accidents in case, they come across a smartphone user who wander into the street without realizing, reports Digital Trends.

To publicize the dangers Philadelphia marked off sidewalk “e-lanes” that was reserved for texting pedestrians on April Fools’ Day in 2012, as per the research firm Pew.

(For feedback/comments, mail the writer at pragyan.ibtimes@gmail.com)

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