Effects of mobile Internet use on college student pedestrian injury risk

Abstract

Background College-age individuals have the highest incidence of pedestrian injuries of any age cohort. One factor that might contribute to elevated pedestrian injuries among this age group is injuries incurred while crossing streets distracted by mobile devices. Objectives Examine whether young adult pedestrian safety is compromised while crossing a virtual pedestrian street while distracted using the internet on a mobile “smartphone.” Method A within-subjects design was implemented with 92 young adults. Participants crossed a virtual pedestrian street 20 times, half the time while undistracted and half while completing an email-driven “scavenger hunt” to answer mundane questions using mobile internet on their cell phones. Six measures of pedestrian behavior were assessed during crossings. Participants also reported typical patterns of street crossing and mobile internet use. Results Participants reported using mobile internet with great frequency in daily life, including while walking across streets. In the virtual street environment, pedestrian behavior was greatly altered and generally more risky when participants were distracted by internet use. While distracted, participants waited longer to cross the street (F = 42.37), missed more safe opportunities to cross (F = 42.63), took longer to initiate crossing when a safe gap was available (F = 53.03), looked left and right less often (F = 124.68), spent more time looking away from the road (F = 1959.78), and were more likely to be hit or almost hit by an oncoming vehicle (F = 29.54; all ps< 0.01). Results were retained after controlling for randomized order; participant gender, age, and ethnicity; and both pedestrian habits and mobile internet experience. Conclusion Pedestrian behavior was influenced, and generally considerably riskier, when participants were simultaneously using mobile internet and crossing the street than when crossing the street with no distraction. This finding reinforces the need for increased awareness concerning the risks of distracted pedestrian behavior.

Possibility of Using Entropy Method to Evaluate the Distracting Effect of Mobile Phones on Pedestrians

“…Texting involves reading and typing, which is more cognitively demanding than talking [11]. Similar to texting, replying to emails and gaming also require cognitive attention that may take a serious toll on safe pedestrian behavior [13,14].…”

“…The distracted pedestrians tended to walk slower, were more likely miss the crossing opportunities, and were more likely to be hit or almost hit because they look at their mobile phones instead of around the street environment. Trial duration [4,5,11,13], success rate [4], time-out rate [4,11], missed opportunities [5,11,13], attention to traffic [5,11,13], and hits/close calls [4,5,11,13] were the parameters used in quantifying the performance of pedestrians when crossing the street.…”

Prevalence of distracted pedestrians while crossing: a study of Malaysia’s situation

“…Due to distractions, it is shown that it can significantly affect crossing speed, increase conflict, less attention to environment and many more errors which possibly end up with accident [9][10][11][12]. Pedestrian's distraction while crossing is a major issue in developed countries and those countries proactively take this issue and come out with various intervention that suit to their cultures and laws.…”

Effect of Electronic Device Use on Pedestrian Safety: A Literature Review1

“…The activities were all equally distracting-pairwise comparisons found no differences among the three distraction conditions in that a naturalistic cell phone conversation resulted in pedestrian behaviors as risky as the behaviors exhibited while engaging in the spatial-and arithmeticfocused conversations. Byington and Schwebel (2013) recorded the behavior of 92 participants crossing a street in a virtual environment. They recruited participants from an introductory psychology class at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.…”