Walking while texting a modern health hazard

A 14-year-old boy was injured when he walked off a six-foot-high bridge into a ditch while talking on his phone. A 23-year-old man was hit by a car while walking down the middle of a road talking on his phone.

The dangers of distracted driving are well known and have sparked new laws, but safety experts are increasingly concerned about a more recent trend: distracted walking.

Pedestrians listening to music, texting, talking or otherwise absorbed in their phones are making themselves more vulnerable by tuning out traffic around them, experts say. While there is little hard data on the problem, safety experts say there is plenty of anecdotal evidence. Many say they think smartphone distractions are at least partly to blame for the number of pedestrian fatalities beginning to rise again in 2010 after years of holding steady or declining slightly.

"We definitely think it's a problem," said Jonathan Adkins, the executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association . "I see pedestrians with headphones on looking down at their phones. They can't see or hear. … Anyone who's out and about sees it every day. We know it's occurring."

The problem drew international attention this month, when the city of Chongqing created a special sidewalk lane for smartphone users to raise awareness about bumping into other pedestrians.

The number of traffic fatalities overall has been falling in the US because of safer vehicles, increased seat-belt use and less drunken driving, experts say.

But pedestrian deaths began to tick up in 2010. By 2012, pedestrians accounted for 14 per cent of US traffic fatalities, up from 11 per cent in 2007.