Texting on the hoof leads people to change the way they walk, new research has revealed. While researchers have previously looked at the impact of phone use while on a level surface, they have now explored how pedestrians cope while using their phones and negotiating that common trip-hazard: step.
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Injuries from falling over or bumping into things while using a mobile phone are on the rise: in the US at least 1,500 pedestrians were reported to have visited hospital in 2010 alone as a result of such accidents.
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Part of it evolved from walking down the road in the middle of the day, said co-author of the research Matthew Timmis of Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford, Essex. The person in front of me was walking very slowly and weaving, and I thought: it’s quite early in the day: is this person intoxicated already?
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When he walked past, Timmis found the person was using their phone.
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To explore the impact of phone engagement on walking, the team kitted out 21 participants with a head-mounted eye tracker and motion-analysis sensors, and asked them to walk 5.6 metres, negotiating an obstacle made of fibreboard and a step made of a box on the way.
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Participants were asked to go around the course three times without a phone, and repeat while writing a text message, reading a text message or making a call three times, making a total of 12 turns each.
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The results, published in the journal Plos One by researchers at Anglia Ruskin and the University of Essex, revealed that fiddling with a phone increased how long people took to complete the task, decreased how often people looked at the step and changed how they walked.
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Participants adopted an increasingly cautious stepping strategy when using the phone and deviated from a straight path more often. While the effects…