This morning, I was reading a very interesting article entitled; “If UR txting, plz watch where UR going”, published today by the Associated Press, that was on the front page of the Kansas City Star. It details an alert issued this week, the American College of Emergency Physicians warns of the danger of more serious accidents involving oblivious texters. The ER doctors cite rising reports from doctors around the country of injuries involving text-messaging pedestrians, bicyclists, Rollerbladers, even motorists.
Most involve scrapes, cuts and sprains from texters who walked into lampposts or walls or tripped over curbs.
Still, ER doctors who responded to a recent informal query from the organization reported two deaths, both in California. A San Francisco woman was killed by a pickup truck earlier this year when she stepped off a curb while texting, and a Bakersfield man was killed last year by a car while crossing the street and texting.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has no national estimate on how common texting-related injuries are. But among the reports it has received: A 15-year-old girl fell off her horse while texting, suffering head and back injuries, and a 13-year-old girl suffered belly, leg and arm burns after texting her boyfriend while cooking noodles.
James Adams, chairman of emergency medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, said he has treated minor injuries in several texters.
“Common sense isn’t always common,” Adams said.
Sometimes even among doctors.
“I have to admit that I started a text while I was driving, and then I said, ‘This is so stupid,’ so I stopped,” Adams said.
Patrick Walsh, an emergency physician in Bakersfield, Calif., said he is a texter, too, but tries to remind himself to do it intelligently.
“We think we’re multitasking, but we’re not,” he said. “You’re focusing on one task for a split second, then focusing on another one, and with something moving 40 miles an hour like a car, it just takes a couple of seconds to be hit.”
Walsh, a native of Ireland, said that on a recent visit there he noticed an effective government TV ad campaign against texting and walking, aimed at teenagers.
The message echoes the new advice from U.S. emergency doctors.
You can read the entire article on this subject (and controversial perspective) here.
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