The notion that we need government to protect us from ourselves is insulting enough on its own, but it’s even stranger to suggest that the threat of a $50 fine is more of a deterrent than the threat of death or serious injury.
Yet that’s what’s being proposed in Ontario, where a Liberal MPP’s private members bill targeting distracted walking — called the Phones Down, Heads Up Act — would fine any pedestrian caught using their cellphone or any electronic device while crossing the street. A first offense would mean a $50 ticket, rising to $125 for a third offence.
Undoubtedly, not paying attention to one’s surroundings can have tragic consequences. In Calgary, for example, two pedestrians were killed less than a year apart at the same LRT crossing. Both, it appears, were distracted by their phones. Had they survived, though, would we really have sent police officers into their hospital rooms to issue them a ticket? Do we really think a $50 fine would teach them more of a lesson than their brush with death?
But how much of a problem is this really?
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First of all, as much as inattentiveness can carry risks, walking while using your cellphone is not inherently dangerous behaviour. In a 2015 study, researchers found that subjects who were asked to walk and text “actually slowed down and engaged in a more protective or cautious walking pattern.” And they didn’t do so because of a fear of being ticketed, but rather because of an inherent human desire to not cause harm to oneself.
So if we’re going to bring in legislation to try to address distracted walking, it’s not enough to rely on individual cases or even our perception that this is behaviour that maybe we ought to regulate (a poll last year, for example, found 60 per cent of Canadians in favour of such a law). We need hard data.
An investigation by Global News last year demonstrates that while distracted driving is indeed a growing problem, distracted walking simply isn’t. In Ontario, the number of fatal and injury collisions involving inattentive pedestrians has remained more or less constant for the past two decades, despite the explosion in smartphone use.
More specifically, though, in Toronto, collisions involving inattentive pedestrians have actually been on the decline since 2005. According to Toronto’s medical officer of health, only 13 per cent of pedestrians involved in collisions were deemed to be inattentive.
Ten years of data from Calgary tells a similar story: in cases where pedestrians were hit by vehicles, 53 per cent of those pedestrians had the right of way. In only 21 per cent of cases did the motorist have the right of way.
The problem, then, would not appear to be the pedestrians. Keep in mind, too, that a person behind the wheel represents a potential threat to others, whereas a person merely walking down the street is only a potential risk to himself.
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Honolulu recently became one of the first cities to implement a distracted walking law, but statistics from that city tell another interesting part of this story. Seniors are disproportionately victims of these kinds of crashes. In fact, Hawaii’s rate of pedestrian deaths for those over 65 is more than double the average for the rest of the U.S. If technology was to blame for the problem of pedestrian deaths, one would expect younger people to be more at risk.
In debates like this, the “if it saves one life” card is often played. And who knows, it’s possible that such a law could, in fact, save a life. The same could probably be said, however, for a law mandating helmets for pedestrians, or a maximum walking speed limit for pedestrians, or even banning pedestrians altogether. Those examples may be further along the scale of absurdity, but it demonstrates why simple platitudes are insufficient justification for such state intervention.
There are many other ways we can more effectively promote road safety, for both drivers and pedestrians. Banning distracted walking is not the way to do it.
Rob Breakenridge is host of “Afternoons with Rob Breakenridge” on Calgary’s NewsTalk 770 and a commentator for Global News.
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