Mobile devices detract from crossing the street

LITTLE ROCK — Research suggests that people who cross the street while using mobile devices are dangerously distracted from the task at hand: getting across quickly and safely.

Researchers in Seattle last summer watched more than 1,100 people crossing at busy intersections. Their study, published online recently in Injury Prevention, reports that almost a third were listening to music, texting or talking on a cell phone.

Compared with undistracted pedestrians, people who were listening to music crossed an average of a halfsecond quicker. But those talking on a hand-held phone spent three-quarters of a second longer in the street, and people with hands-free devices were even slower: 1 1/3 seconds behind those with no distractions.

Worst of all were the texters. They took almost twoseconds longer to get across and were about four times as likely as undistracted pedestrians to engage in at least one unsafe behavior - disobeying the lights, crossing midblock or failing to look both ways.

“There are a lot of analogies with drunken driving,” said the senior author, Dr. Beth E. Ebel, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington. “Cell phones are great, but when they intrude into tasks that require our full concentration, it puts all of us at risk.”