They walk around with their eyes fixed on their cell phone, whether they're busy with the latest Candy Crush or furiously chatting with a friend, and they don't look up until they bump into something or someone. They are smartphone zombies and they are found almost everywhere, but in Tokyo's shopping districts they are becoming a problem that deserves the attention of the city authorities. “41 percent of accidents involving pedestrians or cyclists are caused by reckless use of mobile phones,” says Tetsuya Yamamoto, an officer in the Prevention and Safety Section of the Tokyo Fire Department.
And it's not just those vaguely comic episodes in which a staid businessman, engrossed in his mobile phone, bumps into a light pole or trips over his dog's leash; many are instead serious accidents, sometimes even fatal. More than half of Japanese own a smartphone, and the percentage, which continues to grow, also includes children, who often chat or play with their smartphone on their way to or from school.
NTT Docomo, Japan's largest telephone operator, has commissioned research which shows that the field of view of a person who keeps their eyes on their smartphone is reduced to just 5% of what they would have if they walked looking ahead. Hiroshi Suzuki, head of the Docomo office that deals with social responsibility, has created a computer simulation of what would happen, on a day with medium crowding of the streets, if all the pedestrians, in the act of crossing an intersection, kept their eyes fixed on the cell phone screen.
Result: out of 1500 pedestrians, there would be 446 clashes, 103 people thrown to the ground and 21 broken phones on the pavement (82 smartphone owners, in fact, would remain entangled as they fell to their loved one). Mr. Suzuki, convinced that a good day begins in the morning, goes around schools in Japan teaching children how to use their cell phones responsibly. To remedy the problem, however, not only is there an appeal to civic sense - which is already quite developed in the Japanese; technology also makes its contribution: for example, an application which, activated by sensors, sends a light signal when someone or something approaches the zombie-smartphone, or another, which films and shows the road on the phone screen that the cell phone owner is traveling.
But Tokyo is just one of the many metropolises afflicted by the problem. In China, in the city of Chongqing, a public park has avenues divided into two lanes; one carries written: "No cell phones", the other: "The use of cell phones is permitted but all the consequences are under your responsibility". In the Hong Kong subway, however, recorded messages in Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese and English warn unwary smartphone zombies of the presence of an escalator. But New York State is planning to solve the root problem: in fact, it has been proposed to introduce a bill to ban the use of electronic devices when crossing a street.
