STATING THE OBVIOUS: WALKING AND TEXTING IS HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH
by Hazed
Well, who would have thought it. Scientists have proved just what your common sense would have told you: that walking while texting on your phone is a recipe for disaster.
It’s easy to scoff at research that just confirms what everyone already knows, but actually this result is pretty interesting. It shows that the effect is not just what you would imagine, which is that people who aren’t watching where they are going will walk into traffic, fall into the sea or plummet down holes. It actually affects the way they walk.
The researchers put 26 subjects through some tests to measure their walking in a number of scenarios: walking normally, walking while reading a phone, and walking while sending a text. All the subjects were familiar with modern phones and their keyboards.
Eight cameras recorded their movements as they walked a course of about 8.5m. The resulting footage yielded detailed data about their gaits, including “Relative motion between the thorax and head (neck motion), and between pelvis and thorax (trunk motion).”
The results were that walking while looking at the phone or typing on its keyboard changes the way you walk and reduces your ability to walk in a straight line. This rather explains the observation that “Nine of 26 (35%) participants reported a previous accident while texting on their mobile phone, including falls, trips and collisions with obstacles or other individuals”.
No kidding!
