Pre-occupied Pedestrians Problematic to Their (Own) Health

Well, here’s a sad post for you. It’s amazing how many people—teenagers in particular—have lost their lives over the past year simply by talking or texting while walking. Seems the pre-occupation that accompanies multi-tasking doesn’t go down well in a traffic-heavy environment.

When my son took off in our car, driving the 6 hours to his boarding academy by himself for the very first time—I gave him a good talk about texting while driving and made him promise not to text behind the wheel. He kept that promise, but managed to pull out in front of an SUV anyway. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt (unless you consider a concussion, cracked rib, and not remembering where you were for the last week to be a major injury). But other the decimated car, there were no lasting injuries.

The same can’t be true for a number of people who got too involved with their texting or talking while doing something as simple as walking down the street. You can find a sad list of such accidents just published at injuryboard.com. Teenagers seem most at risk, since they are very much into texting and are also prone to have the MP3 players cranked up. So next time you’re talking to your teen—or other family members—about safety issues, you might want to bring up this little tidbit. A little knowledge can go a long ways, and hopefully will prevent some of these tragic accidents that happen when people forget where they are and what they are doing.