As You Like It: Clown on a unicycle

Walking to work last Wednesday morning, I was standing at Tremont Street waiting for the light to change so that I could cross. Tremont is the busiest street that I pass on the way to work. Not only does traffic race by at unsafe speeds, but the little pedestrian-guy pictured on the walk sign is usually praying. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that crossing the street when the pedestrian signal is on is probably the least safe time to try to make it to the other side. It all becomes a big joke as in, “Why did the pedestrian cross the road? To get to the hospital.”

It would behoove anyone attempting to make it across in one piece to keep eyes, ears and every other orifice open and fingers crossed. So I was completely floored when I saw a young guy yakking on his cellphone and crossing the street while the light was red, never bothering to look in either direction. Everyone around me held their breath as this jerk almost got run over at least twice. It must be true that God watches over fools and small children.

When he made it safely to our side we all stared at him, this walking miracle, but he didn’t even notice. That must have been one important phone call. It’s funny, I’d almost gotten used to people talking on their cellphones while driving, but watching pedestrians nearly kill themselves is a new thing. A recent article in the Boston Globe (1/17) written by Matt Richtel, talks about the newest phenomenon of walkers injuring themselves while talking on their cellphones:

On the day of the collision last December, visibility was good. The sidewalk was not under repair. As she walked, Tiffany Briggs, 25, was talking to her grandmother on her cellphone, lost in conversation. Very lost.

 “I ran into a truck,’’ Briggs said.

It was parked in a driveway.

Distracted driving has gained much attention lately because of the inflated crash risk posed by drivers using cell phones to talk and text.

But there is another growing problem caused by lower-stakes multitasking — distracted walking —  which combines a pedestrian, an electronic device, and an unseen crack in the sidewalk, the pole of a stop sign, a toy left on the living room floor, or a parked, sometimes moving car.

It must be embarrassing, to say the least, to get hurt in an altercation involving an inanimate object. I can just imagine the call to a parent from the emergency room. “Mom, could you come get me, I’m at the hospital.”

“Oh my God! My baby, are you all right? Are you seriously hurt? What happened, where are you? Don’t worry, darling, Mommy’s coming right over.”

“Well I was walking in the street and I walked into a telephone pole. It just came up on me suddenly, Mom, really. I have no idea where it came from!”

Silence on the other end of the line. “A telephone pole??? On second thought, you idiot, you can take the bus home!”

But it’s no laughing matter. According to Richtel:

Slightly more than 1,000 pedestrians visited emergency rooms in 2008 because they got distracted and tripped, fell, or ran into something while using a cellphone to talk or text. That was twice the number from 2007, which had nearly doubled from 2006, according to a study conducted by Ohio State University, which says it is the first to estimate such accidents.

Is it too much to ask that people actually look where they’re going when they walk? I’ve given up on drivers who make left turns, back out of their driveways, change lanes or tail gate me as they blithely yak away on their phones. But for some reason this walking-cellphone-talking thing is making me really nuts. Are people so afraid of being alone with their thoughts that even walking down the street has to be avoided? And when did multi-taking become the norm for every waking moment of our lives?

Cognitive psychologists and neurologists are studying the impact of constant multitasking, whether behind a desk or the wheel or on foot. Researchers are finding that just talking on a phone takes its own toll on awareness.

Pedestrians using their phones do not notice objects or people right in front of them. That was the finding of a recent study at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington by psychology professor Ira Hyman and his students.

One of the students dressed as a clown and unicycled around a central square on campus. About half the people walking in the square by themselves said they had seen the clown, and the number was slightly higher for people walking in pairs. But only 25 percent of people talking on a cellphone said they had, Hyman said.

Up until now I thought that it was merely annoying to see people with electronics attached to their heads. But now I’m learning that it’s dangerous, and not only for them but for everyone around them. We’re no longer a community sharing our outside space with others. We no longer notice, let alone appreciate, our surroundings or the rest of the world. Why should we bother being civil to a stranger when we always have our friends umbilically connected to our ears?

And God forbid if we ever needed someone’s help. We’d have about as much chance of getting their attention as a clown on a unicycle.

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Posted by Joan Florek Schottenfeld on Jan 28 2010. Filed under As You Like It, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.