RSS
Chill Out On The Texting While Walking Bans, Says Professor
from the voice-of-reason dept
At the University of Virginia, there's a professor who studies "the historic relationship between pedestrians and motorists." Lately, he's been looking at pedestrians texting on their phones while crossing the street, and he says that the phenomenon
really isn't anything new, rather it's just the latest iteration of a historically recurring issue. He points out that a century ago, people crossing the street with their nose buried in a book were causing problems. The historical example is a little extreme, but it's valid nonetheless. Banning all sorts of activities, like talking on the phone while crossing the street, really isn't likely to be effective, as the professor notes. He points out that jaywalking laws didn't do much to stop people from crossing the street anywhere they liked, that in fact it was the stigma of being called a "jaywalker" (along with, presumably, the danger of getting run over) that had the biggest effect. He suggests calling people who text while they cross the street "textlemmings". That doesn't seem especially likely to catch on, but the underlying point is that, sadly, you can't ban stupidity, and laws banning things like texting while walking, don't really make people safer, and won't save stupid people from themselves. If you're already not paying attention to traffic while you walk and text, why would you suddenly pay attention to a difficult-to-enforce law?
I have an idea...
From Noodles And Hot Sauce To Funding In 9 Weeks, With Oomf Founder Mikael Cho
Securing Venture Capital for that Next App Development
I have an app...
Developer Census: Be Counted. It takes less than two minutes.
App Developer Conversations: What Does The iPad Mini Mean For The App Economy?
I’m looking for research...
The Growing App Market
Innovate More. Code Less: Optimizing Open-Source Utilization
Reader Comments (rss)
(Flattened / Threaded)
[ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]
[ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]
[ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]
[ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]
What problem?
[ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]
Textlemmings is too long
[ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]
[ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]
[ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Now where was I?
[ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]
[ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Now where was I?
[ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Wow did you come up with this term all on your own or did you just read the post?
[ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]
who's to blame?
[ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]
Name for them...
[ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]
Add Your Comment