New Danger: Texting While Walking

We are all aware of the dangers of text messaging while driving. Operating a 3,000-pound vehicle and taking your eyes off the road to send a reply SMS—sounds just plain brilliant, right? But earlier this week, an alert was issued about another growing SMS-related problem: texting while walking.

The concept is easy to shrug off, but the American College of Emergency Physicians Foundation notes that text-related injuries involving pedestrians are on the rise across the country. Most reported injuries thus far involve bumps, scrapes, cuts, and bruises from walking into street signs and walls, as well as curbside tripping. In some cases, however, injuries have been more severe, and even fatal. Two texting-related deaths have been reported in the U.S. to date involving two California residents, both of whom were hit by oncoming traffic when they stepped out onto busy streets in San Francisco and Bakersfield.

Commonly involving teenagers and young people, texting-while-walking injuries occur regularly on the streets of the nation’s busiest cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston. Even Barack Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett took a spill from a Chicago curb a few weeks ago when briefly diverting her attention from the sidewalk to send a text. Luckily, she walked away unscathed.

As a nation obsessed with time management, we seem to be taking our lives in our hands each time we seize an opportunity to multi-task using mediated communication. I, myself, am guilty as charged for absent-mindedly trotting down the streets of Manhattan trying to get in last-minute texts before ducking into the subway. I haven’t hit anything yet, but I have to admit to a few close calls.

Anyone else a culprit of texting while walking? Sound off in our poll.