Sat, Jul 10, 2010 page9

• Tech firms aim to keep wayward texters upright and on the path

  Companies are searching for inventive solutions to keep smartphone users safe amid a rise in pedestrian injuries because of phone-related distractions

  • By Brooke Donald / AP
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  Todd Atwood says he doesn’t worry much about accidents when walking down the street using his iPhone.

  But he’s seen what can happen.

  “I saw someone walk right into a sign,” recalled the 32-year-old resident of the US. “She didn’t hurt herself but she was startled ... It was funny, but I guess it could’ve been more serious.”

  Using a cellphone while driving has prompted laws in several US states and various countries, but experts say pedestrians are tripping on curbs, walking into traffic, even stepping into manholes as they chat or type.

  To help out, technology companies are creating applications that do everything from make a smartphone screen transparent to transform speech into text.

  Whether the technologies will prevent injuries remains to be seen, but they are being welcomed as a step in the right direction.

  “I don’t think we’re going to eliminate people from walking into things outright and of course we want people to be responsible, but what we’re trying to do is eliminate the friction point ... and give the user back a little mental bandwidth,” said Travis Bogard, the executive director for product management and strategy at California-based Aliph, which makes Bluetooth earpieces.

  Aliph’s Jawbone earpiece incorporates voice-to-text technology that eliminates the need to look at the keypad to send an e-mail or text message. It also has caller ID that speaks to the wearer and a function that allows wearers to call their contacts using their voice rather than their fingers.

  “All of this gets rid of the need to touch your phone, which causes your eyes to move away from what’s in front of you,” Bogard said.

  Other programs on the market tap into a smartphone’s camera to beam an image of what is in front of the user over the message screen so typers can see what is ahead. They include Text Vision, Type-n-Walk and Email-n-Walk.

  “See-through screens, yes, would solve part of the problem,” said Clifford Nass, a Stanford University professor of communications and one of the authors of a study on multitasking.

  “But there’s still a second problem, which has to do with engagement of the brain,” he said.

  Same goes with voice-to-text technology, Nass said.

  “It can help a little bit, but the fundamental problem is that we’re stuck with brains that can’t do all that much when we’re doing other things,” he said.

  Two years ago, American College of Emergency Physicians warned about the dangers of text messaging while walking, driving, biking and inline skating, based on anecdotal evidence from physicians.

  An Ohio State University analysis found that, over the past few years, the number of emergency room visits resulting from pedestrian cell phone accidents has doubled year-on-year. The study showed that, in 2008, just over 1,000 pedestrians visited emergency rooms for injuries like walking into a pole while texting or spraining an ankle after falling down while talking on a cell phone.

  Jack Nasar, a professor of city and regional planning who supervised the study by his graduate student, Derek Troyer, said there were likely even more accidents that were never reported because people will not admit that is how they were injured or the injuries did not warrant a hospital visit.

  Peter Loeb, an economist at Rutgers University who studied the effect of cell phones on pedestrian fatalities, said cell phones can actually keep people safer because they get ambulances to the scene faster.

  His study also concluded that once a certain number of phones exist in the market, the benefit disappears.

  “As more and more people use cell phones, the distraction effect is overwhelming,” he said.

  Exacerbating that is texting, which has grown exponentially in the US in recent years. The Cellular Telephone Industries Assoc reported that the number of text messages sent by its members’ customers increased from 32.6 billion in the first six months of 2005 to 740 billion in the first six months of last year.

  At least two states, New York and Illinois, have considered laws limiting the use of personal electronic devices by pedestrians but no bills have been passed.
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