Can't Walk the Walk? Stop Texting!

Does it take rocket scientist to figure it out? Absolutely NO!

Why some people can be convinced only by researches of some type?

Aren't the conclusions below obvious, without any serious experiments, tests, calculation, graphs and tables?

Are people really more stupid than "smart phone" now?

Looks like robots/machines being the master of human being is not far away now.

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CANBERRA—Texting pedestrians aren't just an annoyance to their fellow walkers, Australian researchers armed with movie special-effects technology have determined scientifically: They're a menace to themselves.

Using motion-capture technology similar to that used for films such as "The Hobbit," University of Queensland researchers concluded that texting while walking not only affects balance and the ability to walk in a straight line, but can actually damage a texter's posture.

"I was checking emails while walking to work this morning," confessed study co-author Wolbert van den Hoorn. "But it has a serious impact on the safety of people who type or read text while walking."

Anecdotes back him up. A tourist from Taiwan walked off a pier near Melbourne last month while checking Facebook FB -1.71%  —bringing an abrupt, and icy, end to a penguin-watching visit. The video-sharing website YouTube is a trove of people too wrapped up in their phones to notice obstacles—like the fountain one U.S. shopping-mall visitor walked straight into.

And as mobile-phone use has grown—to about 77% of the world's population, the study says—so has the number of phone-related accidents. The number of U.S. emergency-room visits linked to phone use on the move doubled to as many as 1,500 between 2005 and 2010, an Ohio State University study recently showed.

Authorities world-wide have taken note. Signs on Hong Kong's subway system advise passengers in three languages to keep their eyes off their phones. Police and transport authorities have highlighted the danger in Singapore, where the Straits Times newspaper recently declared cellphone-distracted road crossing "bad habit No. 2" contributing to the rising number of road deaths. (No. 1 is cyclists not dismounting in heavy traffic.) Some U.S. states, including New York and Arkansas, are considering bans on what they're calling phone jaywalking.

Attempting a technological fix, a conscientious Japanese phone company last year began offering Android handsets that lock themselves if users attempt to use them while walking.

The Australian study used 26 volunteers, a third of whom admitted having collided with objects while texting. They were fitted with reflective patches on their heels, pelvis, heads and torso and asked to walk 8.5 meters three times—once without a phone, once while reading a text and once while writing a text—while eight cameras captured the action.

The findings: Subjects using the phone walked slower and with shorter strides (and slowest of all when typing), and, more seriously, they locked their arms and elbows in—like "robots," in the researchers' words. That forced their heads to move more, throwing them off balance.

"In a pedestrian environment, inability to maintain a straight path would be likely to increase potential for collisions, trips and traffic accidents," said Mr. van den Hoorn. "The best thing to do is to step aside and stop, or keep off the phone."
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