Huffington Magazine Issue 68 | Page 35

GETTY IMAGES/BLEND IMAGES Voices distracted walkers treated in selected American emergency rooms “more than quadrupled” in the seven years surveyed, and were “almost certainly underreported.” A spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association told the AP: “We are where we were with cell phone use in cars 10 years or so ago. We knew that it was a problem, but we didn’t have the data.” Blame the universal myth of multi-tasking for the problem: human brain evolution does not allow for texting at the same time as walking, and that’s a fact. You cannot think as a split-screen: You are always limited to one task at a time, one requiring full attention, and one which becomes a hazardous distraction. What appears to you to be multi-tasked activity are really two tasks half-heartedly attended to, with sometimes-fatal results. You can walk but not text, or text but not walk, much as you can drive but not text or text but not drive, and never both at the same time. If you get away with doing both at the same time, it is mere luck, not your superior multi-tasking skills. Luck is fickle. Solutions will be hard to come by. State legislatures refuse to DR. ROCK POSITANO HUFFINGTON 09.29.13 We are where we were with cell phone use in cars 10 years or so ago.” seriously consider “distracted walking” statutes outlawing the practice, showing a preliminary reluctance to any control on the practice, much as “distracted driving” laws, now common, drew great controversy when first codified in law. But that changed when the body count leapt from year to year, much as the body count of “distracted walking” barrels upward. It remains to be seen whether distracted walking remains a viral joke or is treated with the somber urgency it truly deserves. Dr. Rock Positano is the director of the Non-surgical Foot and Ankle Service at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.