Time was tight, and Kelly Scheiner of Streeterville had many errands to run before her vacation to New Smyrna Beach, Fla. And so, a silver Nordstrom bag draped over her left forearm, she marched north on Michigan Avenue, crossing Illinois Street at a crisp clip, thumbs firing on her BlackBerry.
“It’s multitasking,” said Scheiner, 32, an executive recruiter for a private equities firm. “I have to return these things at Nordstrom, and it’s a way to get more things done: checking e-mails, sending messages.”
Scheiner has no idea when she became a text-walker, though she knows some state officials, including Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, have spoken out in support of a new bill that would ban using a wireless device while crossing streets.
“I think that’s probably smart,” said Scheiner as she walked across to the west side of Michigan Avenue, steps from the Shops at North Bridge entrance. “If someone’s [crossing the street] and not looking, it’s safer for the pedestrian” to avoid texting. Still Scheiner admitted: “Of course I do it. I’m pretty careful. I try to be. But I’m sure I’ve hit someone or something once or twice.”
The Illinois General Assembly bill was introduced in January by Rep. Ken Dunkin (D-Chicago), who said at the time: “This legislation is not laughable. On the surface it’s like, ‘Oh, wow, what is this?’ But it’s becoming more and more of a common problem with people haplessly crossing an intersection and almost killing themselves.”
Under the proposed law, Illinois residents would get slapped with a misdemeanor and a $25 fine if caught using a cell phone or other wireless device while traversing streets.
“The secretary headed a task force on driver safety, and this issue came up, and he was intrigued by the idea,” said David Drucker, a spokesman for Secretary of State White’s office.
“He’s seen a couple of instances of [walking and texting] himself. Right now, though, he feels that it needs more study.”
Stroll the Loop or Magnificent Mile on any lunch hour, and you’ll see an omnipresent parade of text-walkers, with hand-helds clutched, eyes cast down as they type, send and reply.
Text-walkers are also criss-crossing college campuses across the country.
At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, new-student orientations now include cautionary words from campus police about the perils of ped-texting, said University of Illinois Interim Police Chief Jeff Christensen.
The message? “Walk defensively,” Christensen said. “The U. of I. campus is a vibrant, bustling community that has a highly condensed population sharing a very small and busy area.” So far, no incidents or accidents have been reported, though with cell phone texting now widespread, no one on Christensen’s force is ready to call this a non-issue.
While walking/texting might seem like a stroll/scroll in the park, that doesn’t mean the activity lacks its hazards.
Last August, a train struck and injured a teenager in Elmwood Place, Ohio, as he sent a text message from his cell phone. Oblivious to the train’s horns, he walked around crossing gates.
In Springfield, Dunkin pressed for his bill by citing the deaths of two New York City pedestrians who apparently were walking and texting.
Students and young adults, so adept at texting, make up a large subset of the injured seen at Northwesten Memorial Hospital this summer, said James Adams, chief of emergency medicine. “We always see someone [who was] texting or calling, who would not have been in that accident had it not been for the phone,” Adams said.
As for where the accidents occur, “The Lake Shore path is ground zero, and so is Michigan Avenue,” Adams says. “We see people tripping off curbs, off sidewalks, into planting grates. People are moving, it’s crowded and accidents happen.”
What’s worse, those accidents become complicated when it’s on the path, where pedestrians pose as much of a threat as they themselves might be threatened. Adams describes a typical scenario he has encountered: “Someone is texting and walking a dog, the dog goes farther out on the leash and doesn’t get yanked back because the person is distracted. Then the dog goes into the path of a moving bike.”
When that happens, “Summers are ruined,” Adams says. “It’s an emerging trend and one that has not anywhere near peaked.”
The text-walking trend highlights our obsession with making the most of every minute. “There’s this sense of compressed time — an expectation that we should be able to multitask and disengage from the larger world,” said Mark Reinecke, chief of psychology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “We should be in connection with others at all times, and respond to them immediately.”
Is this bad? Not necessarily, Reinecke thinks — though he adds we’re in a period of etiquette-wrestling similar to when cell phones first appeared on trains and buses: “Most people would not text in church, for example. The rules for how we should do this are still evolving.”
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PRACTICE SAFE TEXT
Some mobile texters have developed safety strategies.
“Sometimes I stick my hand out while I’m walking and texting,” says Cate Kim, a 24-year old program director for a Boys & Girls Clubs of America chapter, in an e-mail. “You know, just to avoid a nasty spill even if I end up touching a stranger.” She says texting-on-the-go has led her to ruin high heels, whack walls and trip on a stairwell. Last winter, Kim says, she tumbled to the ground in downtown Chicago, taking a few passersby with her, all while texting on her BlackBerry Pearl.
On an online Internet forum called crackberry.com, BlackBerry users trade tips about how to expertly navigate busy streets while texting.
“U gotta walk with ur chin about 45 degree angle, n u won’t bump into nothing,” reads one post from a user named JBEL. “Trust me it works.”
In London, directory-services company 118 118, operated by The Number UK Ltd., began a publicity campaign in March, outfitting lampposts with padded bumpers in the East End to cut down on injuries to errant texters.
The extra padding wouldn’t have helped Jill Duckstein, a physical therapist from Florida who was vacationing in London in March. Texting with a friend on her BlackBerry Pearl, she fell off a curb into a construction barricade, “on my bum as they say, and feet in the air,” according to Duckstein.
– Wall Street Journal
