I have noise-cancelling headphones because the traffic can be so loud; they don’t actually drown out all the ambient sound, all they do is make it possible for me to hear the music or audiobook, though on most of my dogwalks I have the sound quite low. I take them out to talk to people and pay extra attention while crossing the road, but I’m mostly on side-streets next to the noisy main road and cars hardly ever go down them anyway.
I walk at least an hour a day on familiar roads and I’m bored out of my mind without a book to listen to.
Unless you refuse to turn your head to see whether cars are coming from either direction, having headphones in won’t affect your ability to notice a car coming the wrong way down a road.
I listen to podcasts constantly when walking to and from places if I’m alone. I’ve never been hit by a car or bike, because I still have working eyes and a working neck.
It’s also tricky to get spoken word podcasts loud enough to block out everything else without it being painful, as the variation in volume is much greater.
Your concerns are met with the application of just the tiniest bit of common sense.
First, people wearing earbuds are not necessarily blocking out all environmental sound. Beyond that a person of reasonable intelligence can negotiate a sidewalk without presenting a hazard to themselves or anyone else.
It’s not difficult:[ul]
[li]Keep right.[/li][li]Watch where you’re going.[/li][li]Move in a linear, predictable fashion.[/li][li]Pay attention when crossing intersections or turning corners.[/li][/ul]
Hell, I’ve been walking in a bustling metropolis for thirty years. I share the Stanley Park Seawall with cyclists, joggers, roller-bladers, and powered people-movers and enjoy my music without fretting about a collision, because I don’t walk like an idiot. I am likewise annoyed by distracted, oblivious people - but the use of personal audio devices is largely incidental. People without headphones are just as likely to meander down the sidewalk like a drunk toddler, blithely motor down the wrong side of the walk, or abruptly alter their course without any attention to the flow of traffic around them.
Shouldn’t, but occasionally are. Luckily I live in a bike-friendly area, but the flip side of that is there are a lot of bikes on the off-road paths I use.
Still haven’t got hit because of my preoccupation with the latest witty observations on current news events, though.
I think the point was that many pedestrian fatalities are the fault of drivers and no amount of pedestrian awareness would have helped. If a car is travelling the wrong way down a street that’s one thing - a look both ways would help. But in my experience any close call I’ve had with a car happened when they did something wildly unpredictable - turned with no signal, ran a red light or stop sign, decided to turn at an intersection when the car traffic was clear but forgot to look for foot traffic, backed out of their driveway without looking behind them, etc, etc.
Even though I could see and hear everything just fine (these kinds of things have happened to me both with and without earbuds, so I know it makes no difference) that kind of unpredictable action is, well, unpredictable. I was lucky in every case and I either got out of the way or got the drivers attention. But if you are crossing a crosswalk and a driver decides it’s time to turn left without slowing down or signalling (seen it), then knowing he’s coming is only going to help so much. If you’re in his path you might get mowed down.
So I can definitely see that many (possibly most) pedestrian fatalities have little or nothing to do with pedestrians listening to music. So citing 4,000 dead pedestrians doesn’t mean much unless we know how exactly each of them died.
Really? Your OP doesn’t say much about the safety of pedestrians in general, but rather how irresponsible they would be case of an accident. And, I said nothing about right-of-way, but rather how the individual situations might shed light on the safety precautions taken in each.
Was your friend wearing earbuds at the time he was almost killed? Talking on a cell phone? Reading a book? What was he doing to lower his situational awareness? If the answer is nothing, then your anecdote doesn’t help your argument, either. In fact, I’d say the opposite. If your friend was paying sufficient attention to his surroundings and still managed a close call, then what more could he have done to prevent the near-hit? Yes, I get your point - drivers never win against vehicles. However, you’re refusing to see the other point being made here, which is that pedestrians wearing earbuds aren’t necessarily paying less attention to their surroundings that pedestrians without them.
The closest I’ve come to getting killed was due to irresponsible drivers not looking both ways before they drive through crosswalks. Happens too often, really, which is why you learn never to cross until you make eye-contact with the driver, if possible.
[QUOTE=Meyer6]
So citing 4,000 dead pedestrians doesn’t mean much unless we know how exactly each of them died.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say and without out all the pointless word-ery, too.
Of course some other studies show the distraction factor is more important. It just takes time for the brain to change gears and get into fight or flight mode. This is consistent with the people that say they need the music/podcast/book to keep them from being bored, i.e. they are using them as a distraction.
Listening to music = not a problem. Walking and texting just pisses me off no end, as the people doing it are not watching where they are going and just expect people to get out of their way. I usually go out of my way to not get out of their way.
An intelligent person reading this must necessarily observe that this finding doesn’t says more about the methodology used than real-life situations.
Clearly, one-in-three people listening to music with earbuds while attempting to cross a two-lane road do not come to harm, so the simulation must be at odds with reality. Did the participants have control over the volume? Did the ambient sound closely mirror reality? Were other tactile feedbacks represented? Was the breadth and depth of vision similar to what someone standing at an intersection available in the simulation.
It’s really not that difficult to allocate enough attention to crossing the street safely.
The abstract said 1/3 did come to harm versus 6% with no distractions. The researchers themselves said they said the result was unexpected. They assumed that walking while texting would be the worst.
Personally I have no problem listening to music and walking at the same time, although I tend not to if I am on a hike or walking with my dogs, because I enjoy shit like tweeting birds and other natural sounds that accompany rural or park walks. And as I said upthread I usually listen to NPR talk while working, and my work often involves climbing way up high on ladders or being on a roof. These two activities must involve different parts of my brain because I don’t find them incompatible.
Yeah, that study seems fundamentally flawed. Simulations are tricky and don’t always mirror real world results.
But if 1 in 3 people listening to music were really so distracted that they were at serious risk of being hit by a car, don’t you think that would be a lot more obvious? We’ve all noticed texting drivers that are slow and swervy. We’ve all noticed vapid cellphone talkers who are oblivious to those around them. But I find it hard to believe that listening to music could be *that *incredibly dangerous without us ever noticing.
Apart from anything else I find it hard to believe that nobody would notice that they themselves were having *that *many more close calls with vehicles. I mean, I can tell I’m distracted if I talk on the phone, I can tell I’m a little fuzzy if I have a beer or two, I can tell I’m not too sharp after a poor nights sleep. How do you explain the fact that most people don’t seem to notice any difference between music and no music? We can’t all be *that *clueless.
I’m honestly not just trying to be argumentative - it’s just that the huge differences seen in that study are a little hard to believe.
I’ve listened to music while walking since well before the advent of earbuds. Haven’t you ever heard of a Walkman? It’s not at all difficult to keep aware of my surroundings.
No, but people who don’t mind their own bussiness do. Seriously are you going to start bashing deaf people next because they can’t hear segways or joggers?
It looks like lawyers are getting involved now. If a car hits you while you are using an MP3 player, you may be a situation of trying to prove you weren’t distracted and at fault. They used the term “Inattention blindness”. It looks like they will also to hold you at fault if they can claim you caused them to swerve to avoid you and hit someone else.
which is the opposite of the study you quoted earlier. Unfortunately I don’t see a cite for their claim.
In any case, it doesn’t necessarily surprise me that some lawfirm would offer to sue pedestrians for causing accidents. Hell, maybe some pedestrians deserve to be sued for that. But that doesn’t mean that the law will favour drivers over pedestrians and it doesn’t mean that listening to music while walking should be generally outlawed.
None of this addresses the issues that others have brought up. On one hand, listening to music isn’t illegal for drivers, so it would probably be difficult to make it illegal for walkers. On the other hand, walking does not require a licence and is not subject to the same restrictions as driving is. What’s next, banning deaf people from walking around? Blind people? Drunk people? Children? All of those groups are prone to missing dangers around. But how do you stop people from walking around?