Distracted walking ban is a zombie idea that has infected the brains of reasonable people

Our lawmakers should keep their eyes on things that will actually make roads safer, such as intersection and road design, speed limits and driver behaviour.

Thestar.com
Nov. 5, 2017
By Edward Keenan

On Friday, Nov. 3, eight pedestrians were hit by motor vehicles in Toronto before noon - one of them a 2-year-old child, another in a hit and run, yet another was a woman taken to hospital in life-threatening condition. On Tuesday night, Oct. 31, a 14-vehicle crash resulted in a fiery explosion on Hwy. 400 killed three people, apparently after a fuel tanker truck "approaching the area where traffic had slowed appeared to have crashed through other vehicles, setting off a chain reaction."

So, naturally, a public debate about road safety is in order. And for much of the past week, we've been having one, centred on ... well, let me see. Ah, right, here it is:

We've been debating whether Ontario should follow Honolulu's lead in adopting a "Zombie Law." I gotta say, I honestly don't know if the undead will be deterred by the threat of a provincial offences fine, though anything that will slow their relentless march through the hellscape of the post-apocalypse is worth a - hold on.

Right. It seems what we're talking about is not literal zombies, but instead those who text or use their phones while walking, especially while crossing the street. One Hawaiian city has banned the practice, and there are those who think we should follow suit.

"Distracted walking" is the less apocalyptic term, and I see I've addressed it before, one year ago this week, actually. But apparently it needs addressing again, because this is kind of a "zombie idea," in that it keeps resurfacing from the grave, and periodically feasts on the brains of decent, otherwise reasonable people.

Like Liberal MPP Yvan Baker, who proposes a private member's bill to formally ban texting and walking, and Premier Kathleen Wynne, who may be entertaining supporting it. And like my esteemed colleagues Emma Teitel and Martin Regg Cohn, who have written supporting the idea. These latter two, at least, are smart people and good writers, though in this case they are wrong.

Let's take Teitel's argument first, since it is so amusing and fun, as arguments go. She writes that a ban on texting and walking would help us all avoid the "soul-crushing looks of disapproval from old people that no one should ever have to bear."

I would just point out that applying this things-some-stereotype-of-our-grandparents-disapprove-of principle more broadly would, if the chatter down at the Country Style is any indication, also mean banning "that noisy rap crap" from the radio, require most of us to hike up our pants and stop hiking up our skirts, and force us to get out of bed early on the weekend to "catch the worm." This isn't a legislative agenda I would welcome, really.

But Teitel's other argument, and one Cohn focuses on, is that a fine for looking at your phone while crossing the road is a useful nudge because it is "exceedingly dangerous."

The thing is, this seems intuitively right - it's a good idea to pay close attention to your surroundings when crossing the street. And yet there's not really any evidence that the obviously common practice of phone use in the streets is all that dangerous. At least not to the degree that ought to prompt legislative action, as the Star's editorial board recently argued.

As I observed last year, the vast majority of accidents are attributed to driver error. The only studies that ever cite pedestrian distraction as a factor in even a small percentage of accidents include things like walking dogs and supervising children as distractions. As Oliver Moore of the Globe and Mail reported recently, the Toronto Police Service's Clint Stibbe could not recall a single instance of a pedestrian being struck because they were distracted by their phone in the five years he's served as the force's traffic spokesperson. More pedestrians are struck and killed while standing on the sidewalk, Moore observed on Twitter, than when distracted by their phones. Shall we ban the more dangerous practice of sidewalk use as well? ("If only one life could be saved!" you can imagine the MPP proposing forbidding ever leaving your home on foot saying.)

Still, Cohn writes, a small fine, probably rarely enforced - what's the problem? It's a law, he implies in his column, that will function as a bit of a friendly reminder. "Just as jaywalking laws are aspirational (and barely enforceable) so too a ban on distracted crosswalking could be educational (and rarely adversarial)." In my experience, laws that are "educational" or "aspirational" and rarely enforced are vulnerable to being selectively enforced, employed as a means of harassment or intimidation, or as pretext for a stop and search, or as a way of filling quotas - and employed most against certain groups of people authorities may want to target. The Star's pages have been filled with examples of such selective enforcement for more than a decade. This is especially a potential problem with something like phone use, where whether a person was looking at the phone in their hand or not is a matter that's usually unprovable unless there is videotape on hand.

Besides which, walking against the red light is already against the law. Dangerously darting into traffic is already against the law. There is no need to create new laws to ban behaviours that are already banned.

And in the meantime, the fact is that when someone is in the crosswalk walking on a green light, they have the right of way. This is true whether they are slow or quick. It is true whether they are walking a hard-to-control dog or using a cane. It is true if they are drunk and unsteady on their feet (drunk walking is something that legitimately seems to be a factor in a lot of pedestrian accidents, though no one seems to propose banning it). And it is true, even if they are distracted, by their phones or otherwise. If they have the right of way, drivers are obligated to be aware of them, not vice versa.

Now, principles of basic self-preservation, realizing that most drivers are human beings who make mistakes - and that some of them are reckless, entitled jerks, besides - means we are all well advised to pay close attention to our surroundings when in traffic.

We should teach our children to make eye contact with turning drivers and be aware of whether cars actually stop before venturing in front of them, and to keep their eyes up.

But we should teach our lawmakers to keep their eyes on the things that will actually make the roads safer and eliminate the vast majority of accidents - such as intersection and road design, speed limits, and driver behaviour.