The Dangers of Walking, Technological Hindrances

Cell phone usage has been banned from car usage. If a cop catches you fiddling with your radio dial and veer on the road slightly, you can get a ticket for careless driving. They have found that technology can be dangerous when you need to pay attention, and they are penalizing people for trying to do both things at once.

What about walking?

In an age of cellphones, I-pods, blackberries, PSPs , Nintendo DSs, and sidekicks, I find that most people walking on the widewalk are doing anything but pay attention to where they are going.

Obviously running into someone on the sidewalk isn't the same as careening into another car at 60 miles an hours, but let's talk about frequency. There are probably more people at any given moment apologizing, cleaning up spilled drinks, and dusting themselves off right now than there are people crashing cars because they were on their cellphone.

People don't know how to walk as it is. They aren't aware of flow of traffic, they don't properly gauge speed and direction, and they don't bother to adjust their course.

How often do you do the sidewalk shuffle with someone? You know, when you try to take a step in one direction to clear them, and they end up taking a step in the same direction. You both step back and forth a few times until one of you gives up.

In a way, technlogy has stopped that much. Instead of trying to avoid people, most just barrel straight through, oblivious to what was in front of them.

Mix a person checking their blackberry with the fact that they already had no real care for others around him, and you have a very annoying menace to society.

Multiply by ten hundred thousand. Put them all in Manhattan.