Effects of Smartphone Use on Behavior While Walking

Abstract

There is an annually increasing trend in the number of people who must be taken to a hospital by ambulance following an accident related to smartphone use while walking, making this practice a significant social issue. In recent years, location information games using augmented reality have grown in popularity around the world, and so the risk of collisions or accidents arising from smartphone use while walking is increasing. For the present study, we focused on changes in the behavior of those who walk while using a smartphone to quantitatively verify the increased risk of collision, and conducted walking experiments using an eye mark recorder and an accelerometer. We first looked at the movement of the walkers' point of visual focus, and found that those who walk while web browsing or texting visually confirm the path ahead only about 30% of their total walking time, and that for the visual field, their lateral range in particular was greatly decreased. Further, this tendency did not change with increases or decreases in pedestrian traffic, which revealed that those who walk while using a smartphone do not adjust their level of forward visual confirmation regardless of changes in pedestrian traffic density. Next, analyses were conducted of walkers' avoidance and speed reducing behaviors. It was found that, as pedestrian traffic density increased, a greater acceleration was seen in the lateral and forward directions. It was clarified that, particularly when walking while texting, accelerations in the lateral direction and forward direction at 0.2 persons/m 2 were 1.6 times and roughly twice as high respectively than acceleration at 0.0 persons/m 2 .