Cell Phones Put Pedestrians At Risk Too

 There have been a lot of studies showing the risk of cell phone use to motor vehicle operators but now several interesting studies show that pedestrians are equally at risk while walking and talking on a cell phone. The studies' authors showed a lot of imagination in devising the studies and the results were quite surprising.

Virtual Crosswalks – In a study conducted by psychology professors at the University of Illinois, study participants crossed a virtual street using a treadmill device. The study measured the participants' reaction time and response to situations in which there was a danger of being run over by a passing motor vehicle.

The study found that those listening to music through an iPod or mp3 player fared almost as well as pedestrians who were unencumbered by any outside distractions. However, participants who were using a hands-free cell phone made some potentially deadly mistakes and those talking directly into a cell phone made even more deadly mistakes.

The Study showed that cell phone talkers were slower than normal, often taking longer than the allotted time for the crosswalk clear signal to cross the street. The study's author, Professor Art Kramer, said "Many people assume that walking is so automatic that really nothing will get in the way. And walking is pretty automatic, but actually walking in environments that have lots of obstacles is perhaps not as automatic as one might think."

Unicycling Clown – Dr. Ira E. Hyman Jr., a professor in the psychology department of Western Washington University in Bellingham WA, and his students devised possibly the cleverest and certainly the most humorous of the pedestrian studies. Using a student who knew how to ride a unicycle, they dressed him in a purple clown suit with bright yellow polka dotted sleeves and red nose. While the clown rode his unicycle across a popular campus square, the professor and his students tracked 347 pedestrians, noting whether they were walking alone, talking in pairs, listening to music or talking on a cell phone. They then stopped each pedestrian and asked each if they had seen anything unusual as they crossed the square.

Among those walking alone or listening to music, one third volunteered that they had seen the unicycling clown. Almost 60 percent of those walking with a friend had seen the clown but only 8 percent of those talking on a cell phone noted the clown.

When prompted with the question "Did you see a unicycling clown?" 71 percent of those walking with a friend and 61 percent of those listening to music said they saw a clown. Even when prompted by the second question, only 25 percent of those talking on a cell phone could recall seeing the clown. Professor Hyman referred to this phenomenon as "inattentional blindness; "they put their eyes on things, but they don't see it."

Professor Hyman and his students had conducted an earlier study finding that that "cell phone users walked more slowly, changed directions more frequently, and were less likely to acknowledge other people than individuals in the other conditions."

These studies add to the numerous studies conducted on drivers that found that the amount of concentration needed to conduct a phone call detracts from the attention needed to watch the road ahead or, in the case of a pedestrian, to avoid being run over while crossing the road.

Read more about the dangers of cell phone use and understand safe driving concepts.