Pedestrians: Becoming a 'Smart' phone user

Please read this responsibly and safely :)

Something I suddenly thought about while I was writing this is that you might be reading it on your smartphone. This post (as you will see) is basically about people not concentrating properly when reading things on smartphones, so I just want to ask you to please read this in a responsible and safe way, not while your walking about in traffic.

I really couldn't bear the thought of someone accidentally stepping out in front of a vehicle because they were reading this. It would also, of course, be incredibly ironic.

So, onto the post. 

This is my first real post on Road Safety issues and I've decided to start with the problem of Pedestrians using smartphones. The reason I'm covering this first is because I've already made changes to my own behaviour over the last few weeks to stop being part of the problem, so it seemed like an obvious first post. 

Humble beginnings

I am (sadly) old enough to remember the days before mobile phones and to be honest, even I struggle to remember how we ever did without them. Back in the 1980s, I remember my Dad getting one of the very first truly 'mobile' phones, aptly dubbed the 'Motorola Brick'. It was huge by modern standards and the battery lasted about half an hour on a call, I think.  Oh, and, of course, all it did was make phone calls.

This was the height of technology and extravagance at the time. It was incredibly cool to have a Dad that could call someone while we were out at the shops or down the park, having previously always been tied down to your home phone for making calls or (yes we really used to use them all the time) a Phonebox! Little did we realise quite where things were going.

Technology starting changing rapidly from that point on. Before I knew it, we had smaller, more powerful and more 'useful' devices year on year, Personal Computers, Mobile Phones, Flatscreen TVs, Games Consoles, iPods, Tablets... 

Interestingly enough this advancement of technology was (sort of) predicted way back in 1965, even before I was born, by the founder of Intel, Gordon E. Moore and his very early predictions have since been proven completely accurate. It is referred to as Moore's Law if you're interested.

The rise of Smartphone Addiction

There is no getting around it, mobile phones (and now smartphones) have been consistently on the rise and are now fully embedded in of our culture. Current statistics estimate that 7 in 10 people in the UK now own a smartphone and ownership has grown by around 15% in the last year alone. It's pretty difficult not to get one if you change your mobile these days. My mum still has an extremely dated phone from about 10 years ago, but that's only because she's too old to care about social media etc. and only turns it on if she needs to use it for its original (and primary) purpose of ringing someone (or be available to be contacted by someone) when absolutely necessary and she's not at home.

Smartphones are now cheap, intelligent and powerful. My current phone (HTC One) is not far off the specification of a decent laptop (Quad core processor, 2GB RAM, 32MB drive). The operating systems (iOS, Android etc.) have gone through many changes to make them better and better at multi-tasking and the rapid switching to-and-fro between our favourite applications. The trouble with that is once you get used to it, it becomes completely normal and you then simply can't do without it. 

We are now nearly fully saturated with smartphones in the UK (and elsewhere in the world of course) and also, it seems, completely obsessed with them. Smartphone addiction is now an actual 'thing' and has pages dedicated to it on various medical websites, including this one I found on WebMD.

With the incredible proliferation over the last few years of social media, blogging and other information streams such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr etc. most people under 45 (and probably quite a few over that age too) are constantly hooked up to thousands of people and streams of information in near real-time. If you have all the notifications switched on and your phone is synchronising your applications regularly, there is hardly a minute of the day when it's not pinging or informing you of something new to look at.

I think part of the addiction comes from a Human inability to ignore something if it actively presents itself to you either visibly (you can see it), aurally (you can hear it) or physically (you can feel it, i.e. your phone vibrates). Basically, if your phone tells you there is something new to look at, you simply have to look at it as soon a possible. Why? I'd guess we all start off when we first get a smartphone thinking 'It might be something really important', like a friend in immediate need, and eventually we just get used to checking it all the time, just in case. However in reality, pretty much all of the information we look at daily is not important at all and could easily wait, without having any significant impact on our lives. 

Getting us hooked

There are many businesses out there making a LOT of money out of us and our smartphones. Believe me, they do their research and spend a huge amounts of time, money and resource working out ways to tap into our subconscious and get us all addicted to their technology, website or application and ultimately make themselves more money. As a small example, here is an interesting article explaining the psychology behind why 'Candy Crush Saga' has become so incredibly popular and addictive.

So, how do I know some of this? Well I did a training course for my job recently on User Centred Design (basically how to make websites and applications look nice, appeal to users and work well). The course included a very interesting section on psychological techniques used in commercial websites and applications to make people actually push the button and buy things. Even though I know these techniques now exist, I still find myself getting affected by them so I can't blame anyone else for getting sucked in either. Most of it is not underhand to be honest, it's just pretty clever. The same principles also exist for social media sites, how they look, how they work and how you interact with them.

So, now I've dug into the psychology a bit and I hope the information has given you a slightly clearer understanding of why we all get so obsessed with our smartphones these days. 

So, what are the Road Safety issues this causes when walking about and what can we do about them? 

The Road Safety Issues

Use of smartphones whilst walking have become a big safety concern in recent years and is high on the list of annoyances for a number of friends I've talked to recently. Most of us are constantly checking our phones, responding to tweets, posts and texts or reading information feeds. We are doing all of this whilst trying to perform another pretty complicated task (walking!) that requires a high level of awareness of our surroundings and also quite a lot of coordination. Our brains simply cannot do both at once effectively. 

Lack of 'traffic awareness'

Not being completely aware of of traffic around you is clearly dangerous. You are not looking where you are going and don't observe things properly, because your eyes are glued to your phone. This can, in the worst cases, lead to you getting hit by a vehicle and, god forbid, even killed. And it happens all the time. Clearly this can be bad for you ,but also can be extremely traumatic for the person that hits you and they may never be able to get over it if they seriously injure you, or worse, kill you. It could be a mum with her kids in the back and they are psychologically scarred for the rest of their lives, seeing another human being injured and/or killed by their parent. 

I do have some experience of this myself. I hit a pedestrian with my motorbike a few years back. He stepped out without warning right in front of me as he wasn't paying proper attention. Luckily, I was in slow moving traffic and was only doing about 20 mph so he was just a bit bruised, but it could have been a lot, lot worse. I felt really guilty afterwards and I kept playing it over and over in my head many times, wondering if there was anything I could have done to avoid him. Ultimately, I don't think there was, but still it affected me and my riding for quite a while afterwards.

Lack of 'people awareness'

Whilst not quite as dangerous, this can just be extremely annoying and discourteous. Because you have a lack of awareness of the people around you, you often end up accidentally stepping out in front of them, bumping into them or stopping dead in the street so they need to deliberately take action to avoid you. 

I found quite an interesting infographic about this:

Confession Time

As I want to try and tackle issues slightly differently, providing good information and being completely honest about myself, I will now admit my own faults.

On many, many occasions since owning a smartphone, I've been so engrossed in reading and responding to texts or scrolling down my Facebook wall that I've stepped out in front of vehicles, bumped into other people or generally got in their way (which must have been pretty annoying), I've even bumped into lampposts a few times, which is just embarrassing!

There is a massive volume of traffic and people of the roads these days (particularly on the streets of London, although it's true everywhere else too). It's become very clear to me that I cannot fully concentrate on my smartphone and, at the same time, be fully aware of the complex series of obstacles and people that I need to avoid on the streets to be safe. 

What am I doing to change?

Over the last two weeks since I first had the idea for this blog, I have made a conscious decision to not use my smartphone AT ALL when I'm moving. If I want or need to use it, I take a quick look around me to make sure I'm not going to get in anyone's way, then I step aside and stop. I do what I need to do on my phone, then put it back in my pocket and carry on my way. I only do what I really need to do. I wait until I'm somewhere safe, like on a train, a bus or at home to do the longer tasks like read lots of twitter posts or facebook posts.

What difference has it made?

I can genuinely say that I've found it a very positive experience. I now find I'm much calmer when walking and don't feel so stressed. My brain is not having to try and deal with two complex tasks at once. I've not had any 'near misses' or bumped into anyone. I can fully focus on walking safely and in a manner courteous to others and, when I need to, I can fully concentrate on my smartphone and the task I need to perform as I know I'm completely safe to do it. 

Perhaps the most interesting thing I've found is that my journey seems to take about the same time. I complete my smartphone tasks much quicker and I also walk quicker, because I am only concentrating on one thing at once. 

So, despite stopping every now and then, overall it doesn't seem to make much difference to my journey time and I also feel much safer and less stressed.

I really hope this might make a few people out there think a bit about what they do and how it affects them and others. Why not give my method a try so you too can stop being part of the problem?

I understand that this is just one aspect of the dangers of smartphone use on our roads and I will be discussing the dangers of using smartphones whilst driving in a later post.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to read this and please share if you like it.

Be safe,

Eddie

:)