Distracted Walking Research Articles

Distracted by “distracted pedestrians”?

Some observers view distracted walking as a menace, while others contend that concern is overblown. Understanding these competing frames about pedestrian safety is essential because interpretive frames influence how we try to solve problems. In this study, we survey transportation practitioners to gauge how concerned they are about distracted walking, assess whether windshield bias and professional training influence concern, and determine whether concern influences preferred policy solutions for reducing pedestrian deaths. One third of transportation practitioners surveyed view distracted walking as a large problem, estimating that it was responsible for 40% of pedestrian deaths. Practitioners were more concerned about distracted walking if they primarily use a car or spend little time in pedestrian -oriented areas (windshield bias), or if they work in engineering or public health (professional training). Most importantly, the distracted walking frame does indeed shape policy solutions. Practitioners concerned about distracted walking were more likely to endorse individual-level solutions (like educational campaigns) and were less likely support reducing vehicle speeds. Concern about distracted walking detracts attention from more deadly risk factors, more effective policy approaches, and, most importantly, is inconsistent with the ethos of making streets safe for all users, including children, the elderly, and vision impaired people. Instead of focusing on educational campaigns, practitioners should focus their pedestrian safety efforts on the biggest risk factors and the most effective solutions.

An Investigation of a Convolution Neural Network Architecture for Detecting Distracted Pedestrians

The risk of pedestrian accidents has increased due to the distracted walking increase. The research in the autonomous vehicles industry aims to minimize this risk by enhancing the route planning to produce safer routes. Detecting distracted pedestrians plays a significant role in identifying safer routes and hence decreases pedestrian accident risk. Thus, this research aims to investigate how to use the convolutional neural networks for building an algorithm that significantly improves the accuracy of detecting distracted pedestrians based on gathered cues. Particularly, this research involves the analysis of pedestrian’ images to identify distracted pedestrians who are not paying attention when crossing the road. This work tested three different architectures of convolutional neural networks. These architectures are Basic, Deep, and AlexNet. The performance of the three architectures was evaluated based on two datasets. The first is a new training dataset called SCIT and created by this work based on recorded videos of volunteers from Sheridan College Institute of Technology. The second is a public dataset called PETA, which was made up of images with various resolutions. The ConvNet model with the Deep architecture outperformed the Basic and AlexNet architectures in detecting distracted pedestrian.

Smartphone zombies! Pedestrians’ distracted walking as a function of their fear of missing out

Smartphone use while walking (i.e., being a smartphone zombie) has become a prevalent phenomenon in many cities worldwide. Previous research shows that many pedestrians choose to interact with their phones as they walk around in cities, despite being aware that their behavior might be dangerous. To investigate potential reasons for the prevalence of distracted walking, the current study explores the construct Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) as a potential antecedent of pedestrians' smartphone use while walking. Hierarchical OLS and logistic regression analyses show that FoMO predicts distracted walking, the tendency to engage in virtual social interactions while walking, and dangerous traffic incidents—irrespective of participants’ age and gender. Virtual communication might serve as a compensation for real-world company, thus sidelining the need to traverse safely.

Prevalence of distracted walking with mobile technology: an observational study of Calgary and Edmonton high school students.

Distracted walking poses a safety concern while crossing roads. A 2014 Canadian survey showed that 51% of teenagers were hit or almost hit while crossing the street, many of whom were distracted by mobile technology. An American study demonstrated that 1 in 5 high school students engaged in distracted walking; however, prevalence estimates in Canada have not been described. This study aimed to obtain a prevalence estimate of distracted walking in high school students in Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Students were observed crossing the street at 20 high schools following afternoon school dismissal times during September to November 2017. Behaviours included talking on mobile phone, using earbuds, looking down at phone, and engaging in more than one of these behaviours. Also recorded were median household income of surrounding neighbourhood, outside temperature, gender, and crosswalk type. A total of 3553 students were observed, with 666 engaged in distracted walking (18.7%). Females engaged in distracted walking more than males (19.9% vs.17.6%, respectively). The most prevalent behaviour was using earbuds (66.5%). Males had a lower prevalence of distracted walking compared with females. Distracted walking was more prevalent when the temperature was above 10°C compared with less than 0°C and less prevalent at signaled compared with non-signaled intersections. This study demonstrates that approximately 1 in 5 high school students in Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, engage in distracted walking behaviours while crossing the street. These results may help raise awareness and inform policy to decrease risk of pedestrian injury.

Prevalence and perceptions of cell phone use while walking in high school students

Background: The World Health Organization pointed out that in 2015, road traffic injuries were the first cause of death for children and adolescents aged 10 to 19 and one of the main causes of death for boys aged 10 to 14, resulting in the death of more than 110,000 children and adolescents. In the world, 38% of the children injured or killed on the roads are pedestrians every year. According to the blue book on Internet use and reading practice among Chinese minors (2017-2018), the overall penetration rate of Internet use among surveyed minors reached 98.1% by the end of 2017. The research report on road traffic injuries of children in China shows that most middle school students use electronic devices frequently when walking, which results in their distraction, thus affecting their personal safety. A large number of foreign literatures have proved that distracted walking can significantly increase the incidence of all kinds of dangerous behaviors of pedestrians, and the number of emergency cases caused by distracted walking with mobile phones and other electronic devices is on the rise. The use of electronic devices during walking has become an important factor threatening the safety of pedestrians. The aim of the present research is to investigate the current situation of cell phone use by high school students while walking, the occurrence of dangerous behaviors and the promotion factors, analyze the characteristics of high school students distracted walking, and provide guidance for targeted intervention. Methods: A total of 1,777 students from six senior high schools in Shanghai were selected for online questionnaire survey in December 2018 by convenience sampling. The questionnaire included basic demographic information and information related to distract walking. Results: In different road environments and walking states, the cell phones were most frequently used when waiting for traffic lights and in the residential roads, and 21.3% of students often, frequently or always used mobile phones in these two situations. Listening to music or e-books was the main use of mobile phones when walking, and 27.3% of students often, frequently or always listened to music when walking. The information acquisition (navigation, etc.) was the most important promotion factor, with an average degree of influence of 4.38 (total score of 7). 54.1% of the students had some dangerous behaviors such as not paying attention to traffic lights and road conditions due to using mobile phones, and 41.7% of the students reported that the occurrence of sprained feet, tripping and collisions in the past was related to distract walking. In terms of the impact of different ways of using mobile phones on travel safety, the score of playing games (5.67) was about twice as high as that of listening to music (3.23) (the total score is 7). Conclusion: At present, high school students' distracted walking phenomenon is serious. It is very important to understand the factors influencing the use of mobile phones by students while walking, to carry out the set of school education, parents’ education, peer education and social education as one of the pedestrian safety education, and to strengthen students' awareness of the dangers of distracted walking.

Visual scanning behavior during distracted walking in healthy young adults

BackgroundAn epidemic of pedestrian accidents when walking while texting suggests that people are less aware of their surroundings during distracted walking, and highlights the importance of visual scanning for pedestrian safety. Quantitative examination of visual scanning during distracted walking is still lacking. Research questionIs visual scanning behavior altered by distracted walking in healthy young adults? MethodsWe compared visual scanning behavior in 20 young adults during usual (single-task) walking, walking while performing a letter-fluency task, and walking while texting. Visual scanning behavior was measured by fixation count and dwell time percentage in specific areas of interest. Dual-task effects on gait speed, letter fluency, texting speed and accuracy, and situational awareness were also examined. ResultVisual scanning behavior differed between the three walking conditions. During dual-task letter fluency, participants had significantly more non-walking path fixations than either of the other two conditions (i.e., more frequent, broader visual scanning). Conversely, during dual-task texting, gaze was focused predominantly on the phone, with little visual scanning of the walking path and surrounding environment. When walking without texting or talking, gaze was directed equally to far walking path and surrounding environment. SignificanceTexting while walking is associated with a considerable reduction in overt visual attention to the walking path and surrounding areas. Whether this translates to reduced conscious awareness of environmental stimuli remains unclear. Performing a verbal task while walking was associated with more frequent, wider visual scanning behavior, which may be specific to the nature of the verbal task in this study.

Texting While Walking Induces Gait Pattern Alterations in Healthy Older Adults

The use of a mobile phone for texting purposes results in distracted walking which may lead to injuries. In particular, texting while walking has been shown to induce significant alterations in gait patterns. This study aimed to assess whether changes in the main spatio-temporal parameters of gait when simultaneously engaged in texting on a smartphone and walking are different in older adults relative to young and middle- aged individuals. A total of 57 participants divided in three groups (19 older adults aged over 65, 19 young aged 20-40 and 19 middle-aged aged 41-64) were tested in two conditions: walking, and walking while texting on a smartphone. Spatio-temporal parameters of gait were assessed using a wearable accelerometer located on the lower back. The results show that texting induced similar reduction of gait speed, stride length and cadence in all groups. Slight (although significant) alterations of stance, swing and double support phases duration were found only for middle-aged participants. Such findings suggest that modifications of gait patterns due to texting seem unaffected by age, probably due to different perceptions of the cognitive complexity of the task and differential prioritization of its motor and cognitive aspects.

Use of Phone Sensors to Enhance Distracted Pedestrians’ Safety

Studies have shown that using smartphones while walking—called distracted walking —significantly increases the risk of pedestrians colliding with dangerous objects. In this paper, we explore how to mitigate this problem by exploiting the phone's built-in sensors only and developing an application called BumpAlert . BumpAlert provides a generic solution without requiring any prior knowledge of the user's surroundings by estimating distances to nearby objects using the phone's speakers and microphones. This process is enhanced further by using the images acquired from the phone's rear camera, when necessary. We have evaluated BumpAlert under a variety of settings ranging from aisle to outdoor environments with walls, pillars, signboards, dustbins, and people, etc., that are common in our daily surroundings. Our evaluation has shown an average accuracy of BumpAlert to be higher than 95 percent with a less than 2 percent false-positive rate to detect frontal objects 2–4m away, which suffices for the user to react and avoid collision. Even though BumpAlert is unable to detect all dangerous situations, most participants of our user study feel safer when they walk with BumpAlert enabled. Integrating our current design of BumpAlert with other safety systems can provide a practical solution for protecting distracted pedestrians.

Pedestrian Behavior at Signalized Intersection Crosswalks: Observational Study of Factors Associated with Distracted Walking, Pedestrian Violations, and Walking Speed

In the past two decades, cell phone and smartphone use in the United States has increased substantially. Although mobile phones provide a convenient way for people to communicate, the distraction caused by the use of these devices has led to unintended traffic safety and operational consequences. Although it is well recognized that distracted driving is extremely dangerous for all road users (including pedestrians), the potential impacts of distracted walking have not been as comprehensively studied. Although practitioners should design facilities with the safety, efficiency, and comfort of pedestrians in mind, it is still important to investigate certain pedestrian behaviors at existing facilities to minimize the risk of pedestrian–vehicle crashes, and to reduce behaviors that may unnecessarily increase delay at signalized intersections. To gain new insights into factors associated with distracted walking, pedestrian violations, and walking speed, 3,038 pedestrians were observed across four signalized intersections in New York and Arizona using high-definition video cameras. The video data were reduced and summarized, and an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model was estimated to analyze factors affecting walking speeds. In addition, binary logit models were estimated to analyze both pedestrian distraction and pedestrian violations. Ultimately, several site- and pedestrian-specific variables were found to be significantly associated with pedestrian distraction, violation behavior, and walking speeds. The results provide important information for researchers, practitioners, and legislators, and may be useful in planning strategies to reduce or mitigate the impacts of pedestrian behavior that may be considered unsafe or potentially inefficient.

Changes in cognitive load and effects on parameters of gait

AbstractReading or texting with a mobile phone while walking requires cognitive resource allocation and consequently induces changes in gait. Fifty-six young adults walked along the GAITRite© walkway under baseline, low-, and high-cognitive loads. Participants’ Functional Ambulation Profile (FAP), velocity, and stride length decreased while double-support time increased under higher cognitive load. This result shows that during cognitively loaded multitasking conditions participants are unable to stabilize their gait. In addition, lower FAP scores across the conditions suggest an increased risk for future injurious falls. This study demonstrates that distracted walking using a mobile phone can affect several parameters of gait and it would be prudent to not read or text on a mobile phone while walking.

The impact of walking while using a smartphone on pedestrians’ awareness of roadside events

Previous studies have shown that using a cell phone to talk or text while walking changes gait kinematics and encourages risky street-crossing behaviors. However, less is known about how the motor-cognitive interference imposed by smartphone tasks affects pedestrians’ situational awareness to environmental targets relevant to pedestrian safety. This study systematically investigated the influence of smartphone use on detection of and responses to a variety of roadside events in a semi-virtual walking environment. Twenty-four healthy participants completed six treadmill walking sessions while engaged in a concurrent picture-dragging, texting, or news-reading task. During distracted walking, they were required to simultaneously monitor the occurrence of road events for two different levels of event frequency. Performance measures for smartphone tasks and event responses, eye movements, and perceived workload and situational awareness were compared across different dual-task conditions. The results revealed that during dual-task walking, the reading app was associated with a significantly higher level of perceived workload, and impaired awareness of the surrounding environment to a greater extent compared with the texting or picture-dragging apps. Pedestrians took longer to visually detect the roadside events in the reading and texting conditions than in the dragging condition. Differences in event response performances were mainly dependent on their salient features but were also affected by the type of smartphone task. Texting was found to make participants more reliant on their central vision to detect road events. Moreover, different gaze-scanning patterns were adopted by participants to better protect dual-task performance in response to the changes in road-event frequency. The findings of relationships between workload, dual-task performances, and allocation strategies for visual attention further our understanding of pedestrian behavior and safety. By knowing how attentional and motor demands involved in different smartphone tasks affect pedestrians’ awareness to critical roadside events, effective awareness campaigns might be devised to discourage smartphone use while walking.

Self-Reported Behaviors and Habits of Distracted College Pedestrians While Walking

Walking requires paying attention to the surrounding environment to ensure safe maneuvers. Walkers engaging in multitask activities such as texting, calling, listening to music, snacking, and reading while walking have detrimental effects on safety similar to those experienced with distracted drivers. Because this is an emerging problem, few data have been collected to assess the negative impact of distracted walking on safety. The present survey was conducted to collect information on distracted walking by college students. The objectives were to estimate the extent of distracting activities of college pedestrians and to assess the perception of the safety problem of college pedestrians while walking. The survey was sent to the potential student population of 5,000 by Survey Monkey at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, and 297 surveys were completed. The results indicated that about 55% of respondents always checked their electronic devices while walking. Further, about 4% of the respondents reported that they or their immediate family members sustained injuries resulting from distracted walking. More important, approximately 53% of the respondents had seen near crashes resulting from pedestrians engaging in distracting activities while walking. In this survey, males engaged more in distracting activities than females. About 70% of females perceived that distracted walking had become a problem, compared with 30% of males. The most common proposed interventions by the respondents to curb distracted walking include education, outreach programs, citations, and legislation.

What Do Planning Professionals, Police, and Pedestrians in General Think About Distracted Driving and Walking?

Issues that relate to distracted driving and walking are discussed by presenting results from a survey of planning professionals, police officers, and pedestrians in New Jersey. The pedestrian intercept survey was completed by 788 individuals, while the online surveys for planning professionals and police officers were completed by 209 and 156 individuals, respectively. The surveys primarily focused on the perceptions of seriousness, prevalence, and solutions to distracted driving and walking. One of the key findings from the surveys is that all three groups considered distracted driving and walking to be serious problems that were becoming increasingly more common over time. Of types of driving distractions, texting and talking on handheld phones were considered to be two of the most common and yet least safe driver distractions. All three groups perceived mandatory education for new drivers, stricter enforcement of existing laws, and more severe penalties for drivers involved in crashes as the most important solutions to distracted driving. Educating students by schools was considered to be the most important solution to distracted walking. While strong support was found for police checking phones of drivers involved in crashes, little support was found for police intervention to curb distracted walking. The study’s findings are being discussed through outreach with select agencies to develop and adopt strategies to address distracted driving and walking in New Jersey.

Distracted walking: Examining the extent to pedestrian safety problems

Pedestrians, much like drivers, have always been engaged in multi-tasking like using hand-held devices, listening to music, snacking, or reading while walking. The effects are similar to those experienced by distracted drivers. However, distracted walking has not received similar policies and effective interventions as distracted driving to improve pedestrian safety. This study reviewed the state-of-practice on policies, campaigns, available data, identified research needs, and opportunities pertaining to distracted walking. A comprehensive review of literature revealed that some of the agencies/organizations disseminate useful information about certain distracting activities that pedestrians should avoid while walking to improve their safety. Various walking safety rules/tips have been given, such as not wearing headphones or talking on a cell phone while crossing a street, keeping the volume down, hanging up the phone while walking, being aware of traffic, and avoiding distractions like walking with texting. The majority of the past observational-based and experimental-based studies reviewed in this study on distracted walking is in agreement that there is a positive correlation between distraction and unsafe walking behavior. However, limitations of the existing crash data suggest that distracted walking may not be a severe threat to the public health. Current pedestrian crash data provide insufficient information for researchers to examine the extent to which distracted walking causes and/or contributes to actual pedestrian safety problems.

Effects of Mobile Technology Use on Walking

Objective: The goal of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of combining cognitive and kinematic measurements to study the effects of mobile technology use on walking. Background: It has previously been shown that being distracted by a cell phone, or other mobile technology, can have a negative impact on activities such as crossing a street and may also alter gait patterns. While the negative effects of cell phone use on driving have been extensively studied, research into the distracted pedestrian is lacking. Method: Twelve adults walked down an office corridor without using a cell phone (BASELINE) and while performing a secondary cognitive task under two conditions. The secondary task involved answering simple multiplication problems through either text messaging (TEXT) or while talking on the phone (VOICE). Participants’ gait patterns were measured using a GAITRite gait pad LEGSys wearable wireless sensors. Results: In the TEXT condition, participants walked more slowly and had shorter strides. There was no significant difference between the VOICE and BASELINE condition. Participants answered more multiplication problems per trial in the VOICE condition as compared to the TEXT condition. Excluding typos, error rates for the multiplication problems were not significantly different between the TEXT and VOICE conditions. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that the effect of reading and responding to text messages on gait was able to be detected utilizing methods that do not require strictly sterile laboratory settings. This serves as a proof of concept for researchers to bring the study and evaluation of distracted walking into the naturalistic environments in which it actually occurs. Application: This proof of concept will serve as a roadmap towards moving the study of gait and distraction from simple observational studies in naturalistic environments to specific quantitative analysis of people performing real world tasks in real world settings.

Technology-related distracted walking behaviours in Manhattan's most dangerous intersections

Use of mobile devices has been cited as a distraction while driving, and more recently, among pedestrians crossing urban streets. In 2010, over half of New York City traffic fatalities...

Impact of Cognitive Training on Balance and Gait in Older Adults.

Cognitive processing plays an important role in balance and gait and is a contributing factor to falls in older adults. This relationship may be explained by the fact that higher order cognitive functions such as executive functions are called upon while walking. The purpose of this study was to examine whether a cognitive training intervention leads to significant improvements on measures of balance and gait. This randomized trial tested whether cognitive training over 10 weeks improves balance and gait in older adults. Participants were randomly assigned to a computer-based cognitive training intervention or measurement-only control. Outcomes included Timed Up and Go (TUG), gait speed, and gait speed with a cognitive distraction. Data were analyzed using analysis of covariance models with change scores. Participants' (N = 51) average age was 82.7 for those randomized to intervention and 81.1 for those randomized to control. After 10 weeks, intervention group participants performed significantly better than controls on the TUG. When the cohort was limited to those categorized as slow walkers (baseline 10-m walk ≥ 9 s), intervention participants performed significantly better than controls on TUG and distracted walking. Cognitive training slows degradation of balance and improves gait while distracted, rendering it a promising approach to falls prevention.

Editorial

<h3>Background</h3> To determine the level of distracted walking among teenagers and pre-teens in the U.S. and China, research examined the percentage of teenagers and pre-teens crossing the street near schools while distracted in a sample of communities in both nations. Results and focus group findings were used to develop targeted interventions. <h3>Methods</h3> Observations were made of 34,325 of teens and preteens crossing streets near schools in 24 communities in the U.S, and 8,250 observations were made of teens and preteens in 8 communities in China. Data was collected near middle schools and high schools. Observers conducted two morning and afternoon sessions, on different days but held at the same time, on school days in good weather. Each observer focused on one crossing location. Students also participated in focus groups that explored attitudes and perceived risks. <h3>Results</h3> Most frequent forms of distraction in the U.S. were texting, 39%, headphone use, 39%, and talking on phones, 20%. In China, key distractions were headphones, 42.5%, texting, 22.5%, and games, 15.8%. The odds of a girl crossing the street distracted were greater than of a boy in both countries. Differences in distraction levels were also observed when traffic lights are present and at different times of the day. During focus groups in both nations, nearly 50% of students reported cell phone use while walking to school. Teens did not perceive distraction putting them at greater risk. Findings were used to build ”The Moment of Silence” Campaign, which uses social media to engage teens. <h3>Conclusions</h3> Many teens and pre-teens are distracted while walking, but do not perceive this behaviour as risky. Targeted interventions are needed.

The association of distraction and caution displayed by pedestrians at a lighted crosswalk

The rates of deaths and injuries among pedestrians have fallen in recent years, but still remain public health problems as about 5000 pedestrians die each year. Because pedestrians have been shown to be responsible or partially responsible for many of the crashes in which they are involved, we sought to assess the relationship of distracted walking and performing routine cautionary behaviors of pedestrians crossing a busy street in a southwestern city at an intersection, adjacent a university. The behavior of 866 individuals was recorded by trained observers as pedestrians walked across a 105-foot wide street served by a stop light and zebra painted crosswalk. We defined distracted pedestrians as those wearing headphones, talking on a cell phone, eating, drinking, smoking or talking as they crossed the street. Caution was measured by looking left and right, and entering the crosswalk only when the white proceed light was illuminated. We found that only 13.5% of walkers looked left and right and entered the crosswalk while the white light was flashing. Approximately 20% of walkers were distracted as they crossed the street. Regression analysis indicated that distraction was negatively, but weakly associated with displaying cautious pedestrian behaviors. Because traffic lights were routinely ignored and lack of caution was predicted by distraction, we suggest that inexpensive education efforts target pedestrians near college campuses.