Professional multitasking at work may be a good skill, but the same cannot be said for personal multitasking, for obvious reasons (read: accidents). Take into consideration walking while using smartphones, which happens to be one of the most common multitasking activities people do. According to Reader’s Digest, texting and walking at the same time is a major cause of road accidents and injuries, as pedestrians are distracted due to looking at their phones.
Enter Japan, the country that’s almost always two steps ahead of every one else. Recently, the Yamato City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan made an announcement about the prohibition of “walking while looking at smartphones”, which will take effect on July 1st.
Last June 1, Soranews24 reported that the city conducted a research earlier this year, in which, in a sample size of 6,000 frequent visitors of Yamato Station and Chuo-Rinkan Station, 12 percent of people just can’t seem to stop checking their smartphones while walking.
Japanese lawmakers believe that the result is significant to the town’s population as they are unwittingly being exposed to danger. This month, the Yamato city council will vote for the approval of the ban for the said activity.
The main purpose of the ordinance is to prevent traffic accidents and raise awareness about the risk of being distracted using smartphones.
However, the new regulation hasn’t established its proposed punishment or sanction.
The city’s lawmakers also plan to make a “walking smartphone prevention section” where a person can use his/her smartphones while standing in one place to avoid pedestrian accidents.
/VT
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