Dramatic Increase in Pedestrian Deaths Noted by New Study

According to a new study in the online journal Injury Prevention, the number of headphone-wearing pedestrians seriously injured or killed near roadways and railways has tripled in the past six years.

Surprisingly, "Thirty-four of the 116 total cases in the study specifically mention horns or sirens being sounded before the victims were struck, wrote researchers including Richard Lichenstein at the University of Maryland Hospital for Children."

Whereas the dangers of driving while distracted have been publicized for quite some time, the dangers of distracted walking may be different in key ways. Researchers concluded that, "Sensory deprivation that results from using headphones with electronic devices may be a unique problem in pedestrian incidents, where auditory cues can be more important than visual ones."