Wearing headphones while walking can be a risky business, new research from the University of Maryland suggests.
In a study published last week in the journal Injury Prevention, researchers looked at reported pedestrian-vehicle collisions in which the pedestrian was wearing headphones — either the cover-the-whole-ear variety or ear buds. They found 116 reports of death or injury under such circumstances between 2004 and 2011. Eighty-one of the collisions resulted in the headphone-wearer’s death.
Nearly 70 percent of the victims were male and about two-thirds were younger than 30. Most of the accidents (59 percent) took place in urban areas. In 34 of the 116 cases, reports mentioned that horns or sirens had been sounded before the victim was struck.
The authors suggest two ways that wearing headphones might contribute to an increased risk of accidents. Headphone use can lead to “inattentional blindness,” a form of distraction in which a person’s attention is divided between listening to the sound the device is producing, manipulating its controls and fundamental tasks such as walking. Headphones can also cause “environmental isolation” — blocking out external sounds such as horns and sirens.
The authors note that their study didn’t allow them to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between headphone use and a pedestrian’s being struck, and that other factors, such as suicidal intentions, substance abuse or mental illness, might have been in play in some cases.
