Yes. Are you saying all people walk and drive while staring at their phones nowadays? Do you have any actual proof other than anecdotal evidence and confirmation bias?
"Kids these days" and their "new things" have always been a thorn in the older generation's side, and "society" and "civilization" has always been "going downhill" and "back in my day" and all that jazz is eternal. That doesn't make it true.
I think you are shrugging this off to easily. How to even quantify the problem? How to systematically analyze it? Very hard, indeed. Every single instance is just a single instance, a data point, an anecdote.
My opinion:
A systematic problem with almost mesmerized smartphone users (addicts?) exists. (Maybe it is region dependent, hence I speak for my area).
"Hans guck in die Luft" maybe an old story showing the general problem existed long before mobile electronics. But such behavior
was frowned upon "back in my day" (and earlier) --
hence the existence of that story. The message was clear: Watch where you are going!
The inner city has been full when I was a kid and when I was a teenager -- and it is full now. I can't remember (my mother can't either for the case somebody doubts my memory concerning early years) regularly seeing people walking while reading from paper (book, newspaper, magazine). It might have happened every now and then.
But for sure, I can't go from one end of the pedestrian area to the other
nowadays, without seeing
multiple(!) people staring at their phones (and, no, I don't avoid them anymore).
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Two weeks ago a bus driver was
actively using his phone while driving. Using as in: touchscreen/internet usage, not phone call. He made multiple small driving errors and when he finally drove the completely wrong way, I told him in no uncertain terms, that his behavior was not only unacceptable but also illegal, and would have consequences. For the first time after seeing multiple bus drivers using their phones behind the steering wheel regularly, I decided to not stay quiet anymore. The few other passengers hardly noticed what was going on -- guess what they were all doing.
I have been using the bus often (thousands of times) since kindergarten days and can assure: There was not a single incident with a driver distracted by paper -- compared to multiple phone incidents this year alone. Hardly a week passes without a bus driver using their phone.
Falling into a river as pedestrian might actually be a valuable lesson to watch your step. Driving giant a multi-ton vehicle with 250KW power, maybe full of school children, is where the fun stops once and for all.
When somebody tries to solve a social problem in a technological way, this is the result:
(Why wasn't this considered before? If similar levels of distraction existed before?)
for stupidity like this, exist this:
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