This Japanese ad, by mobile phone carrier NTT Docomo, purports that one in every five people who walk while using their Smartphone will experience some type of accident or injury. I believe it. They’ll probably also inflict many an injury on innocent people, too. (I witnessed a mother crossing a busy downtown Los Angeles street with her toddler yesterday smiling at something and texting and I wondered WHAT could be so important that she had to reply to it right then and there?)

Attention to the surroundings is neglected while walking around staring at your cellphone.

We decided to study the danger of texting while walking using a computer simulation.

We used a computer simulation to have 1,500 people text while walking at Shibuya Crossing, the busiest crossing where people can cross in every direction.

What actually happened? Chaos? Fear? Comedy?

See the numerous unusual movements resulting from texting while walking.

*Some of the numbers used in the simulation were based on the research results of Professor Kazuhiro Kozuka, Department of Media Informatics, Aichi University of Technology.

Okay, so it’s not exactly the infamous 1979 Who concert in Cincinnati, but it does show you how disoriented people get from walking and texting. And from what I can tell, a few animated people do get trampled.

 
Via Daily Dot