Four out of 10 Canadians admit to distracted walking
Posted November 3, 2016 7:13 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – November can be tough for both drivers and pedestrians for a few reasons — it’s darker earlier, the weather is bad and visibility can be very poor. And now a new survey suggests distracted walkers are only adding to the risks on the road.
“Just over four out of every 10 Canadians admits to distracted walking at some point during the day,” says John Bordignon with State Farm Canada, which released new pedestrian safety numbers this week.
“The other surprising thing we found in the survey was that 45 per cent of Canadians admit to wearing headphones and listening to music while walking and over 70 per cent admit to jaywalking,” he tells NEWS 1130. “If you add them all up, you can imagine someone walking down the street texting, listening to music and then jaywalking. You can see that could have some serious ramifications.”
Bordignon says someone stepping off the curb and into a crosswalk while distracted by a device adds to the dangers of November, a month known for an increase in injuries and fatalities to pedestrians.
“A lot of that has to do with the clocks falling back this weekend and the darkness descending sooner, during rush hour. You have people getting used to the shift in their biological clock, it’s dark and you have pedestrians walking around distracted. That doesn’t bode well for safety.”
The message, according to Bordignon, is that your smartphone can wait. “We are so attached to them these days, as soon as you get that text or you need some tidbit of information, you forget everything else and go to the phone. We are trying to get people to understand the dangers of distractions. You don’t need to be on the phone every second. It’s not that urgent. Pay attention to what you’re doing.”
Otherwise, he says, it could result in serious injury or even death.
