Module G - Walking and Talking - a new concern

Learn the serious risks of texting and walking!

Read the text and answer the questions We see them everywhere – people typing text messages while walking. Texting and walking is a known danger. According to recent studies, distracted walking results in more injuries per mile than distracted driving. Consequences include bumping into walls, falling downstairs, tripping over clutter, or stepping into traffic. The issue is so common that in some cities, bumpers were placed on lamp-posts along a busy avenue to prevent people from colliding with them. “When texting, you’re not fully in control of the complex actions of walking,” saysDietrich Jehle, professor of emergency medicine at the University at Buffalo. “While talking on the phone is a distraction, texting is much more dangerous because you can’t see the path in front of you.” And in our world, with social media becoming increasingly dominant, texting isn’t the only concern. It’s not uncommon to fnd a person walking, head down, scrolling through their Twitter feed, or checking email. What do we learn from the first 2 paragraphs? Why walking is a complex action How the problem has been solved Why texting is always a dangerous activity How texting compares to other cellphone activities Though injuries from car accidents involving texting are often more severe, physical harm resulting from texting and walking occurs more frequently, Jehle says. He explains that pedestrians face three types of distraction: manual, in which they are doing something else; visual, where they see something else; and cognitive, in which their mind is somewhere else. Which of the following is correct according to to the above paragraph? Pedestrians are more easily distracted than drivers. Texting while walking is more dangerous than texting while driving. Pedestrians are more frequently involved in road accidents than drivers. While texting, the pedestrian is mainly focused on the cellphone. Children who are busy texting, (-). (lines 18-24) are involved in more road accidents than adults cross the street more slowly than adults are less careful than adults take more time to cross the street In his practice, Jehle has seen, frst-hand, the rise of cell phone-related injuries. Tens of thousands of pedestrians are treated in emergency rooms across the nation each year, and Jehle believes as many as 10 percent of those visits result from accidents involving cellphones. He says the number of mishaps involving texting and walking is likely higher than official statistics suggest, as patients tend to under-report information about themselves when it involves a behavior that is embarrassing. A study at Stony Brook University found that when people texted while walking, they wandered off course 61 percent more and missed their target 13 percent more than when they were not distracted. It has also been found that children using cellphones are less likely to look both ways while crossing the street and it takes them up to 20 percent longer to cross the street than children who are not using a cellphone. As a result, the slow-crossing youngsters are up to 43 percent more likely to be hit by a vehicle while crossing the street. The extra seconds needed to cross the street are often fatal. COMPLETE THE SENTENCE.According to Dr. Jehle , some patients are too embarrassed .............. Historically, pedestrian accidents affected children, the drunk or the elderly, saysJehle. However, over the past ten years, coinciding with the rise of smartphones,cell phone-related injuries have skyrocketed, the victims being mainly young adults between the ages of 16 and 25. A study from Ohio State University found that the number of pedestrian emergency room visits for injuries related to cellphones tripled between 2004 and 2010 – even though the total number of pedestrian injuries dropped during that period. What is compared in the paragraph above? Laws discouraging texting and walking have been written up, but are strongly voted down, says Jehle. His suggestion: mobile applications that text via voice command or use the phone’s camera to display the approaching streetscape while pedestrians text. Although Jehle prefers that pedestrians keep their eyes off their phones until they reach their destination, he says these apps are better than nothing at all. What does the writer present in both the first and last paragraph? Jehle says that the best way to ensure pedestrian safety is (-). to pass laws forbidding texting while walking to make more apps available to refrain from texting while walking to increase pedestrians’ awareness