Accidents: Risk of using headphones while walking

Researchers have found steep increase in injuries caused to people who use headphones while walking on streets and they have warned them of the serious accidents.

The psychologists view the situation of walking with electronic devices like personal organizers, MP3 players and mobile phones as in-attentional blindness or divided attention.

The data from the Google news archives, US Consumer Product Safety Commission and US National Electronic Injury Surveillance System were analyzed by the researchers and it was later published in the Injury Prevention journal.

It also involved the data from a university research database from 2004 to 2011. It acquired these information to find out the injuries to the pedestrians who were using headphones.

The accidents involving hands-free, mobile phones and those of cyclists were not included in this research. Among the accidents, a quarter of them were warned by sounding a horn or siren.

In US it is accounted that about 2/3^rd of the victims were under 30 years and about 1/10^th were under 18 years. Almost half of the accidents has victims stuck by trains.