It appears incredible that it does not happen much more often. We all see them, especially around campus: young people crossing the street wearing headphones, occasionally oblivious to what's going on about them.
I've hit the brakes over once for bicyclists and pedestrians who have floated in front of my moving car on University Avenue, never glancing in my path. They can't hear you honk. All you are able to do is shake your head and hope that person doesn't end up dead.
Like Joey Kramer. He was walking to Longfellow Middle School in Wauwatosa on Monday and was hit and killed by a freight train. Regardless of the warning whistle beats by dre studio, he by no means heard it coming. He was listening to headphones.
No 1 formally tracks how frequently headphones play a component in pedestrian injuries or fatalities. But only weeks ago, University of Maryland medical researchers took at stab at it. Of the accidents they had been in a position to find from media and other sources that involved pedestrians listening to headphones dr dre headphones, they noted a six-fold improve from 2004 to 2011.
Researchers possess a name for the distraction caused by electronic devices: inattentional blindness. In short, it means you will find an excessive amount of stimuli for a person's mental resources to handle.
In the Maryland study beats pro, researchers looked at 116 accident cases involving headphones from 2004 to 2011, 70 percent of which had been fatal. Fifty-five percent from the accidents involved trains.
Larry Corsi monster headphones, pedestrian and bicycle security program manager for the state Department of Transportation, says he's "not seen a lot" of accidents associated to headphone use monster beats, but it's most likely been an undocumented element in some instances.
"It's not something we track that closely," he says.
In Wisconsin the good news is the fact that pedestrian injuries have decreased by 44 percent since 1990. But you will find nonetheless lots of them. The DOT reported 1,239 accidents resulting in injuries in 2010. Of those, 54 resulted in death. Corsi says that number rose to 58 last year.
The tragic case of Joey Kramer puts this year's pedestrian deaths at 3, compared with 10 at this date last year.
But you have to wonder just how much the injury and death rate might be additional reduced if fewer pedestrians had been afflicted with inattentional blindness.
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