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Can Talking On Your Cellphone Get You Run Over While Crossing A Busy Roadway?

By: Jason Kembell Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Children younger than 13 years taking part in an unusual interactive research were more likely to
endure a virtual accident if they talked on the telephone while
they were crossing a roadway, researchers have found. Young teens are far from the best road-crossers to begin with, the study conductors said. But in the research, talking on the phone increased the chances of being hit or almost struck by a virtual car from 8.5 to 12 %, a 43 % spike in risk.

The study was published in the (Feb) issue of the journal
Pediatrics. The report comes on the heels of several others that have stated that talking on the cell phone takes a toll on the attention and visual processing skills of drivers, and may cause the possibility of an automobile accident
four-fold.

Crossing the busy road is very complicated, if you stop and ponder it," said an associate professor of psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Children younger than 13 years aren't capable of doing it as good, he said, when conversing on the phone.

Dr. Schwebel and his colleagues placed 77 preteens in a virtual reality environment that mirrored an intersection, standing across the busy street from a school with trucks and cars passing by in both directions. Researchers
asked the 10- and 11-year-olds to decide when it would be best to cross. The children stepped off a platform almost the height of a sidewalk curb when they thought it was safe.

Each child did twelve virtual busy street crossings, half while talking on the telephone. About half of the children were conversing during their first six crossings, while the other half received calls during the second six crossings.

Even though ability got better with time and practice, the psychologists found, the telephone conversations distracted the children, making them less attentive to traffic. While on the telephone, they more often hesitated before leaving the simulated sidewalk and left themselves too little time before another car drove by, causing more close calls and more
collisions.

The computer world did not mirror life in one
crucial way: it did not allow for children to speed up the pace and run
across the busy road, nor could a car slam on the brakes or swerve to avoid hitting the children, Dr. Schwebel said.

On the other hand, using a cell phone wasn't new to any of the children, Dr. Schwebel noted. All of them had used the telephone before.

If you're a parent, you should probably tell your kids not to be texting or speaking on the cell phone, or listening to an mp3 player for that matter, when walking across a busy road, said David Strayer, professor of psychology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and an expert on cell phone safety.

This is consistent with what we know about how the mind works when people are driving, Dr. Strayer added. You definitely need your mind to navigate through the world, whether you're riding a motorcycle or skiing or rollerblading.

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