Short answer: “eyes glued to iPhone”, however distractions of any kind existed before the smartphone from people blasting loud music with headphones via a walkman, putting the radio at max volume, having either a book or newspaper obstructing one’s view. You get the point, I once heard an incident involving a woman almost getting ran over by a street car in Turkey all because she’s glued to the phone screen whilst walking.
There are so many people, so many fucking people in my office that will stop in the middle of a thoroughfare to chat with someone, see you coming and not move an inch. I don’t understand how so many people be so fucking obnoxious.
Maybe I’m jus becoming an old grumpy man, but teens these days seem completely oblivious to their surroundings. More so than I ever remember. For sure, not every teenager, but the ones I see standing cluelessly in front of busy exits, don’t understand how to stand in line, how to pass gates in airports, how to be less obnoxious… are so often teenagers these days. Probably better that way as we completely fucked their future.
Yes. Situational awareness is generally shit, even when not glued to a phone.
How can I pay attention to my surroundings when I’m so busy thinking of some embarrassing thing from 15 years ago that absolutely no one remembers or even cares about except for me?
I oftentimes see elementary school kids crossing the street while looking down at iPhones with headphones on. And driving I oftentimes have to honk at others because they’re glued to their phones too.
I remember when smartphones were still new-ish people were doing the same but there were big campaigns about distracted driving; now most cars have Android Auto and CarPlay but people still refuse to put down the motherfucking phone.
The other day I was driving down a single-lane road and there was a guy literally standing motionless in the middle of the road looking at his phone.
I got right up behind him without him noticing (earphones in) and then blasted the horn.
I think it made quite an impression on him.
Today? Sure.
Yesterday? Yep.
They probably complained about people being distracted by using the abacus or whatever way back in the day.
Out of curiosity I searched around for the amount of people killed by buses over time, the classic not-paying-attention death, and it seems like the number has been fairly stable since 2000.
My hypothesis was that if people were getting less good at paying attention that number should rise. One factor I couldn’t control for is people becoming more aware of being hit by a bus and being more alert in that specific situation. That would also explain the stability of the number as the population has risen quite a bit since 2000 but the bus fatality rate has remained the same, which might imply the bus death per 100,000 would actually be going down. I also didn’t look at the rate of injury, so safety technology could be shifting more fatalities to non-fatal injuries.
Either way the bus data does not suggest that people are paying more or less attention than they always have. Further research is required as the results were inconclusive.
Interesting, but yes I.'d think (hope) each bus death. or injury changes the driver and bus operating organisation, and municipality in some way. Even if it was the pedestrians ‘fault’, the bus can probably do things to reduce the risk.
This research should ideally start with a random/representative sample of people exposed to a measurable level of bus death risk.
I’d actually say bus fatalities probably isn’t a good data set to use if you wanted to do like actual research about it. There are too many variables that easily accessed public data doesn’t cover. Like you’d want to filter accidents caused by the driver or another vehicle, the number of buses in circulation over time, demographics of the victims, among others.
Someone has that data, but it’s probably specific to a city. Additionally there are entire classes of people with near zero chance of being hit by a bus, such as people living in rural areas and people who mostly travel during hours buses aren’t running, like 3rd shifters in cities with a limited bus program.
How did they get an entire car inside of a turkey?
