Austrian phone addicts taught how to cross the road

The Vorarlberg branch of the Austrian Road Safety Board decided to put on the workshops after noticing large numbers of pedestrians not looking where they were going while crossing the street.

“We observed 2,500 pedestrians and saw that 29% of them were distracted while crossing the street,” head of the Vorarlberg branch Martin Pfanner told the ORF. “That is a dangerous situation for pedestrians and the numbers are of course alarming.”

The group found that teenagers were particularly prone to either messaging, talking, or listening to music on their phone while crossing the road.

Now young people are being taught in workshops about some of the distractions to watch out for, which also could include eating and smoking while on the go.

It is widely known that car drivers already face fines if they are caught using their mobile phones while driving but pedestrians and cyclists can also face legal consequences if they are found to have caused accidents by not paying attention to the road.

This could be the case even if errors made by the other person involved in the traffic incident is the “cause of the accident”.