Officials in Yamato city, a densely populated city near Tokyo, Japan, have submitted a bill to the city assembly to stop people from using their phones while walking.
It’s a scene in almost every busy city, pedestrians are glued to their phones while walking and even crossing streets, thereby increasing the risk of collisions and accidents exponentially.
The bill submitted by city officials aims to raise awareness on the serious life-threatening dangers pedestrians face when they are not vigilant while moving around.
“The number of people using smartphones has rapidly increased and so have the number of accidents” in the densely populated area, city official Masaaki Yasumi told AFP.
“We want to prevent that,” he said, adding if passed it would be the first such ban in Japan.
The number of accidents caused by people using their phone while walking and even while riding a bicycle have increased in Japan and the new bill aims to end that.
In 2014, research by Japanese mobile giant NTT Docomo estimated a pedestrian’s average field of vision while staring down at a smartphone is five percent of what our eyes take in normally.
The company ran a computer simulation of what would occur if 1,500 people used the hectic Shibuya pedestrian crossing in Tokyo while all looking at their smartphones.
The results showed that two-thirds would not make it to the other side without incident, with 446 collisions, 103 people being knocked down and 21 dropping their phones.
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