Walk, Text, Crash: An Orwellian Future

This episode underlined the hazards of texting while walking, which can surely be as dangerous as texting while doing almost anything else. Almost: there are no available statistics on the adverse effects of texting while having sex, which seems popular in some demographics.
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The man coming toward me in the park, maybe 500 yards up the path, was walking a large, mixed-breed black-and-white dog. He (the man, that is) was bearded and graying, nattily dressed in black pants, a red plaid sports shirt and gray sweater.

Just ahead of me, walking in the same direction as I, was a younger man dressed in sweat pants and a jacket and holding the end of a leash attached to a tan Labrador retriever.

Both men were totally absorbed in texting.

It was a slow-motion episode exquisitely orchestrated for a YouTube video, if only I had been quick enough with my cellphone; as it was, I could only watch, fascinated and wordless. They collided at full speed, one cellphone clattering onto the asphalt and one leash dropped. But there were no apparent casualties. The dogs, at least, had sense enough to have steered themselves safely onto the grass where they were sniffing each other with unconcerned abandon. I smiled politely and kept going.

The episode underlined the hazards of texting while walking, which can surely be as dangerous as texting while doing almost anything else. Almost: there are no available statistics on the adverse effects of texting while having sex, which seems popular in some demographics.

Not long ago, New York Times columnist Nick Bilton wrote a piece in which he shared a New Year's resolution to quit texting while walking.

"The realization that I may have a problem (along with a lot of other people)," Bilton wrote, "hit me smack in the face, literally, a few weeks ago when I was strolling through Kennedy International Airport, avoiding obstacles with my peripheral vision as I clambered out a text message. Without any warning (as I couldn't actually see), I was involved in a head-on collision with another man who was also texting while walking."

Most walking-zombie texters do survive, as Bilton did, with only bruised egos or minimal damage, but that's not always the case. An Ohio State University study links "distracted walking" to the dramatic increase in pedestrian injuries and deaths.

Equally dismal, for the future of the planet, is how texting while walking may alter human interaction, whether texters live or die with their devices. One report, an interview with Dietrich Jehle, professor of emergency medicine at the University of Buffalo, suggests an Orwellian solution to texting/walking hazards: a cellphone app that shows the landscape ahead, so that texters can text interminably, and see where they're going without ever looking up.

Is there life beyond a 2 ½ x 5 inch screen?

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