(Source: Huffington Post; Daily Mail, UK)
We continue to hear from our officials how distracting cell phones are while operating a motor vehicle. Some states and law makers along with the Secretary of transportation have mounted a very vocal campaign to educate the driving public about this growing problem.
If that is not enough of a problem caused by the proliferation of mobile devices, now we have one more form of distraction – this one involving pedestrians totally distracted by their electronic devices such as cellphones and handheld music/gaming units. Interestingly, some of these incidents are captured by surveillance cameras fitted at the facilities where such accidents happen. Here is one such incident involving a 10-yr old boy who was playing video games on his PSP. The boy who was accompanied by his parents fell off the platform onto the tracks at a local station in Italy but was luckily there was no oncoming train and also a police officer on duty saw the boy go off the edge and jumped on the tracks to save him.
This other widely circulated video was taken at a shopping mall, shows a young woman, Cathy Marrero, walking straight into a pool of water in a decorative fountain all the while texting her friend on a cell phone. What’s more interesting is Ms. Marrero is now suing the mall management for publicizing the video.
Grrr.. Technology can be a boon and at times like this it can be bane too. There is nothing one can do to stop such incidents unless the users of such devices realize such potential dangers and walk carefully. Amazingly, Cathy Marrero who suffered the humiliating fall in the mall has a message for everyone, especially the younger generation, out there – HANG UP and WALK or else you could risk getting hurt/killed/humiliated.
