Crossing the road on the phone...

Bard

"Most" people who cross the road with a phone at their ear probably cross safely too. Strangely, I don't have those particular statistics to hand. The whole argument of "I nearly knocked someone down who wasn't paying attention because he was on his mobile therefore crossing the road while on a mobile should be banned" is ridiculous, in fairness.

PeadarofAodh

To be honest I don't think mobiles make a huge amount of difference to how people cross the road - So many people just cross and look while going, maybe you're just blaming stupidity on the fact that they're carrying a phone while they do it?

I was cycling into UCD a while back and this guy looks both ways...twice...then proceeds to walk straight in front of me. BANG. He's probably going to need a hip replacement by the time he's 40 Only thing that annoyed me was I was nearly thrown over the handlebars into oncoming traffic :eek:

Schlemm

It really grinds my gears that a lot of ppl in this country seem to have problems when it comes to traffic lights and crossing roads, whether you're on foot or in a car or on a bike.

The worst is when you're driving through town and you get to a set of lights, like the ones at the top of Dawson St and the hoards of ppl are just raring to cross that road, gazing in anticipation for that elusive moment when the traffic lights will turn green!

Oh yes! But in the meantime they push their buggies out over the brim of the path in anticipation, some brave souls even lunge themselves halfway out into the traffic, only to flee back from whence they came. I reckon that countdown thing on pedestrian lights only makes things worse. People are working themselves into a frenzy! Why can't ye just wait the extra 10 seconds or so for the little green man?!

But what really happens is that the green man comes and then you wait again while several cars run the lights in a frenzied convoy.

Traffic in Dublin is pure sh!te if u ask me.

Wertz

There's a body of evidence based on a lot of research done into mobiles and driving....the gist of it is that there is a danger in using the phone whilst doing something else that requires a level of concentration
It stems from our brain's necessity to focus on the person we're talking to and what the conversation might be about, due to the lack of a physical being in front of us, and things like body language and visual communication.
We're a social animal and have evolved our skills of face to face communication over 100,000s of years; suddenly over the last century we've had to quickly adapt to holding involving and lengthy conversations with people remotely....yet our brain lacks that visual element but will try and "fill in the gaps" by either trying to visualise the person or whatever it is he/she is talking about....the result is an apparaent absent mindedness in many people whilst using the phone. It doesn't make them any less smart than people who don't do this...it's just a coping mechanism.

This research was done mainly about driving....the upshot is that even whilst talking on a handsfree, you are a lot more likely to be involved in an accident....which ends up having little or nothing to do with having both hands free or not.

Incidentally, people who text while crossing the road deserve to be under the wheels of a passing lorry. It's not as if it couldn't wait.

Pazaz 21

I agree with the "people don't know how to cross the road properly anyway" side of the discussion.

Case in point: Was coming home from work the other day, mam driving and me riding shotgun. We were stopped at the lights and their was a women with a child in a buggy waiting to cross the road. She looked to her left, then to her right, then waited for the green man to go red and lunged across the road using her buggy as some sort of shield(or excuse i presume). My mother was so dumbfounded that she didn't accelerate but the truck besides us did and just managed to miss the crazy b*tch.

QED thus it is proven.:rolleyes:

Gaspode

Deleted User wrote:

Nowhere near as bad (or as scary) as seeing a man driving an oil truck around a roundabout using one hand whilst yammering away on his mobile.

I witnessed a young girl on a moped with one glove in her mouth, and as I did a double take I realised this was because she was texting - and this as she rounded the roundabout at the Halfway house on the Naven Road. Now there's multitasking!

Still though, back on topic - the OP is right, too many people get completely wrapped up in their phone calls and saunter out onto the road. Hitting them would be the natural selection way to solve this, but the insurance on my car is bad enough without having to get gimp-shaped dents removed from the front of it every week.

Red Alert

On friday evening about 5.30pm a real fool walked out in front of an inbound luas leaving Harcourt station. Not only that but she didn't realise the luas was beeping the horn (not the bell) at her. The guy in the tram nearly had to put on the emergency brakes to avoid hitting her.