UAE residents on phone walking into poles

Published Monday, July 01, 2013

By Bindu Suresh Rai

We’ve all heard of the BlackBerry thumb, the iPhone neck and other new-age medical maladies that continue to plague tech junkies with overuse of their smartphone devices.

A recent study has shed alarming light on the growing number of pedestrian injuries due to mobile phone usage in public places; and it appears that the UAE is not immune to this phenomenon.

Dubai-based marketing manager Rabia Khan recalls the night she received a call from the emergency room, with her friend Zara Maqsood asking her to come fetch her from Rashid Hospital.

“I panicked at the time and Zara wouldn’t give me any more details, she just kept weeping and told me to come soon,” recalled Khan.

Upon reaching the hospital, Khan learned her friend’s injuries were superficial and she was expected to make a full recovery.

But the relief was short-lived.

Khan continued: “I grew suspicious when repeated attempts to find out how she ended up in the hospital garnered no concrete answer.

“So I finally asked the nurse on duty, which informed me that Zara was texting on her phone while jaywalking and was tapped by a car.”

Khan said that it was a week prior to the incident that she had been forced to pull Zara back from a busy road because, “The woman was too busy chatting on her phone to actually glance at the road for any oncoming cars.”

Unfortunately, Zara isn’t alone in this life-threatening tech addiction.

‘Distracted walking’, as it is referred to, is more commonplace for UAE residents than one would believe.

Emirates 24|7 spoke to 31 people, of which 22 confessed to being guilty of the distracted walking charges.

“Of those, 13 had, at one time or the other, crossed a junction whilst chatting or texting on the phone.

Of the remaining nine, four had walked into a light pole or a street sign while texting; three had tripped and fallen while not concentrating on the street-walk; and two had bumped into people causing both to trip.

Jaagruti R, one of the respondents, said: “My friends yell at me all the time because I simply tune out when I’m chatting or texting on the phone.

“Twice, some friend or the other has pulled me back from a junction because I failed to notice the oncoming cars.”

For Yousef B, his little jaunt of distracted walking had him walk into a light pole.

“I was in the midst of an argument with a friend, and well, bump went the head,” he laughed.

“But the bruise served as my wake-up call and now I am more vigilant.”

Student Sajid K confessed to tripping over a pram.

“I still don’t know how I didn’t notice a pram in front of me,” he said.

“But there I was on the floor, with the pram on top of me; thankfully, there was no baby in the pram at the time. Never again though.”

The Ohio State University study concluded that 69.5 per cent of the injuries that occurred came from people who were distracted by a conversation; texting only accounted for 9.1 per cent.

The majority of the injured were under the age of 31, and men were the guilty party more often than women.

The number of injuries also more than doubled, from 256 to 1,506, during the time of the period studied, from 2004 until 2010.

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