Ford Coins a New Term to Protect Cars from Pedestrians: 'Petextrians'

A post by the Ford Motor Company offers this likely controversial take on pedestrian safety:

One pedestrian is injured in a motor vehicle crash every eight minutes, a number that’s been on the rise in recent years. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has equated this increase in injuries to a global influx of “petextrians” – pedestrians who simultaneously walk and text. This, combined with the rise of distracted driving due to smartphones, created a massive new safety problem for drivers and pedestrians alike.

To "combat this issue," Ford is touting a new technology called "Pre-Collision Assist with Pedestrian Detection," which is available on the 2017 Ford Fusion. Here is how the Ford Motor Company describes their creation of the technology:

Along with the safety team utilizing 240 terabytes of test data, we used 12 vehicles and conducted over 500,000 miles of development testing on this technology spanning the world. Through this, Pre-Collision Assist was able to record 3 million scans of roadside objects, vehicles and pedestrians across both highway and non-highway roads.

The Ford Motor Company even created a video to show how the technology works, and why it was necessary.