Heads Up!
“Miller said she was walking along, paying more attention to her phone than where she was going…Her companions heard, “”Oh God!” And then a splash.”
ABC News, St. Joseph, Michigan
I’m torn about perpetuating these strange popular stories – Chicken Nugget Girl, Baby x , the guy with the homemade bird wings hoax. But they say so much about our culture, our ways of being. Woman-Who-Fell-Off-Pier-After-Texting-While-Walking also falls right into that “strange but true” category, as much for the wonder of her story being covered as an “exclusive” news piece by her local media, as anything else.
Although Woman-Who-Fell-Off-Pier was “quite embarrassed” about the whole thing , she was still willing to heroically go on the evening news at the scene of her clumsiness to talk about the experience which, from the seriousness of the reporters covering the piece, suggests it was so much more than a case of not looking where you’re going.
“I couldn’t let pride stand in my way of warning people to not drive and text, or walk and text. It can be dangerous,” Mrs. Miller told the reporter with equal gravity.
Besides the rescue circus of pier walkers who included Miller’s husband, son and a by-stander, fire fighers, police and the coast guard also showed up, no doubt at great expense to tax payers, amused or otherwise. Oh for the days of swimming and wading ashore (Miller fell into just six feet of water), or simply climbing up the ladder attached to the pier, and waving off undue attention.
What a strange new problem.
The dangers of texting while driving have become abundantly clear, if for whatever reasons they weren’t obvious in the first place. But walking? We have become toddlers in a strange texting land! Consider the following Fast Facts from the US Office of Compliance (who knew there was such an office?):
- A teenage girl in New York City fell six feet through an open manhole while texting, sustaining minor injuries but, more problematically, exposed to raw sewage.
- A Florida teen died from injuries received when he stepped into the path of oncoming cars as he crossed a busy city street while texting.
- A university exchange student stepped into the path of a bus while jogging and listening to an Ipod in North Carolina.
- A man sustained a broken finger when he tripped and fell while talking on his cell phone.
- At least three people in the Washington D.C. area have died in accidents recently while wearing headphones.
The report goes on to say, “A study conducted at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington by psychologist and professor Ira Hyman and his students noted that
Texting at 65 mph - while heading up the Sunshine Skyway!
talking on a cell phone takes a toll on cognition and awareness. The study showed that pedestrians using their cell phones often did not notice objects or people in their path. They also found a type of preoccupation called “inattention blindness,” meaning that a person can be looking at an object but fail to register it or process what it is. “
More stats, from the report, these from a study conducted by the University of Birmingham that focused on children using cell phones. The study found:
- Students using cell phones took up to 20% longer to cross the street than children who were not using a cell phone;
- Slow-crossing students with cell phones were up to 43% more likely to be hit by a vehicle while crossing the street; and
- Children looked both ways 20% fewer times when crossing the street while using cell phones
In a 2009 study published in the University of Alabama at Birmingham Pediatrics journal researchers found that children whotext or talk on a cell phone while walking near or on a street are 40 percent more likely to get hit by an automobile. Digital Trends cited a recent study by Stony Brook University that found participants texting while walking “consistently veered away from walking a straight path by a 60 % deviation. Wandering to the left or right could easily explain how Bonnie Miller found herself falling off the edge of the pier. The amount of distance traveled by people within the study increased by 13% and participants took approximately 33 % longer to reach a destination when texting while walking. The research team also found that walking while talking on a cell phone increased travel time by about 16%.”
Have we finally reached a time in our history where we’re so busy talking with our thumbs we can’t walk with our feet? Have we become sidewalk potatoes -sometimes mashed with a side of gravy? Will helmets and knee pads become accessories to smartphones?
As disturbing as it is entertaining, London, which is apparently among the most text-accident prone places in the world, went so far as to cushion all the lampposts on the evidently aptly named Brick Lane, a particularly hazardous stretch of pavement that in 2007 alone had a reported 68,000 texting accidents. Cameras were installed to “capture pictures of people running into these obstructions and record incident frequency.
I looked for some evidence of any resulting report, but couldn’t locate anything. Perhaps they’re just too embarrassed to release it.
Some of the finest minds are working on solutions though:
“For consumers with Android-powered smartphones,” notes the Digital Trends piece, ” an application developer named Sascha Affolter has created an app called Transparent Screen that uses the camera to show what’s directly in front of the user while walking. The transparency effect can be adjusted by the user and works when texting or using other applications like Google Maps.”
Great – a heads up display for the inattention-blind to further enable a bad habit – when you could just put your own darn head up and see where you’re going. Hate to go all Luddite here – I mean I’m organizing a Mini Maker Faire and everything! – but technology without common sense is just a waste of resources, potential and the human experience.
Casey Neistat is more inclined to counsel some tongue-in-cheek texting etiquette, instead…
I’ve been at dinners, on outings, and walks and otherwise hanging out with friends and family who feel compelled to answer every text chime, and to tap away about where they are, or where they’re going, or what they’re going to do next week, completely missing their immediate surroundings, head down while the world goes by, always somewhere else and rarely where they are. We ‘re not only taking a lot longer to reach our destination if we’re texting while walking, or while being with others, but we’re seeing commensurately less along the way.
And it’s not just that we fail to see the edge of the pier or the looming lamppost; we’re missing each other, the company of the people we’re with, their features and expressions, their gestures and touch, the nuances of their words and thoughts. We’re missing the scenery – trees, flowers, grass, birds and animals, the landscape of neighborhoods and cities, the play of shadows, the swirl of leaves or even paper in the wind– all the things that make up the texture and tapestry of our immediate surroundings in the present moment, an instant in time we pass through only for the briefest instant and never have again.
Long ago, the answering machine was this great invention that freed us from having to answer the phone every time it rang, or from having to wait around for important calls. We could leave home to do things and listen to the messages when we returned, disregard unimportant calls and return important ones as needed. Now, oddly, “smart” phones have enslaved us again, more deeply than a corded phone ever did, to the ball and chain of instant accessibility. Now instead of waiting at home for important calls – which were really far and few between – we’ve elevated every minute piece of communication to the realm of “important.”
But freeing ourselves is easy. Turn off the phone. It’s smart. It takes messages. Need to send or receive a truly important message? Then stop, pull over, sit down, excuse yourself briefly from your company– and then send or read. And turn it off and rejoin life, previously in progress.
And look up. It’s a 3D world out there –enjoy it!
This Happened on TAM Airlines…or Somewhere, Sometime, Maybe…
If you can read this, you’ve probably seen this: the story of a “50-something woman” who took issue with being seated next to a black man on Brazilian airliner TAM, and is smoothly upbraided by an airline attendant when she offers to reseat the black man in first class, to the rousing applause of nearby passengers. It seems disingenuous to call this hopeful story a “hoax“, although it’s certainly an urban legend, almost as old as the Internet itself. Original circulation of the tale dates back to 1998.
What’s touching about the story is how many people want to believe it’s true, and therefore a sign of the times – of better times, and better people, who stand up for what is right and good and true.
It’s kind of disappointing to realize this story probably doesn’t have any basis in reality – or perhaps only remotely so – but that there really is a chicken nugget girl, who ate almost nothing but chicken nuggets for 15 years (and only recently became sick?), and that a blob of glue vaguely resembling Homer Simpson just sold for nearly $240,000 on eBay. Why are the stupid things true?
Most of us would like to believe that we could be good and noble like the unnamed flight attendant who put the racist passenger, quite literally, in her place. And maybe a lot of us actually would. Most people I know really are good and kind and noble. We’re just not always in the right place at the right time to exercise our good intentions. We just read about awful things in the newspapers or see them on the news, and are left to wonder if we’d step in to stop the fight, dispel the argument, bring common sense to bear in a situation that badly needs it, or if it would be another one of those times when you think of the perfect thing to say or do long after the opportunity to say or do it has passed.
Stories like the TAM Airlines tale give us hope, help us rally, inspire and empower us. Does it matter whether it really happened, if it inspires us to speak out?
Hoax-Slayer observes, “The Facebook version of the story calls on users to “share if they are against racism”. However, as with similar stories that ask people to share to fight against child abuse or animal cruelty, it is difficult to see how simply sharing will do anything to help. The act of sharing such posts often leaves people with the largely misguided belief that they have actually done something to remedy the specified problem. Unfortunately, racism is still deeply entrenched in many people and societies. Often, racism is exhibited in much more subtle – but equally destructive – forms than the blatant example outlined in the story above. Of course, effectively combating racism in all its insidious forms requires a lot more than sharing a story on Facebook. “
That’s true – but I also think the act of sharing the piece, which I saw being passed around by friends who really do work to combat social injustice in their everyday lives, is also an act of solidarity. In sharing this anecdote, they’re saying, “This is what justice can look like.” Combating racism requires feet on the ground, but it also requires dialog. Stories create powerful dialog and this little piece of mythology can be another tool in the social justice arsenal against the mythology of racism itself, a good fiction against the bad fiction that some people are better and more important than others just because of the color of their skin.
Whether it really happened on TAM Airlines is moot. That we want to believe the story is true and consider it an example of how we can stand up against racism and hate, is deeply relevant and important in creating a world where this kind of story would also be ancient history.
Chicken Nugget Girl and the Fate of the Free World
From the annals of weird but true stories comes this “nugget” from the UK: A 17 year old British girl who has eaten almost nothing but chicken nuggets since she was two years old, collapsed recently and had to be taken to a hospital, where she was found to be suffering from anemia and swollen veins in her tongue.
Where to start with this one…
First, I did some rudimentary research to confirm it really was a true story, coming from The Sun , and all. But sure ‘nuff, Stacey Irvine, who looks relatively okay, has in fact eaten primarily processed chicken nuggets for the last 15 years of her life, with fries (or chips, across the pond) and the occasional culinary venture into toast for breakfast and the rare potato chip for a snack. Doctors call hers a “beige” diet, a blandly descriptive enough term.
I’ve got one of those monochromatic eaters – she has Asperger’s Syndrome , in which a limited diet is fairly common. But as a young adult who was exposed to a wide variety of foods at a young age and who hails from a family that generally likes to try new foods, her diet ranges to some reasonably healthy shades of yellow and red, and includes the proper amounts of most of the necessary nutrients. Interestingly, she’s fond of chicken nuggets, too, but is also well aware that while chickens have wings and breasts and legs – nowhere does their anatomy include a “nugget.”
“McDonald’s chicken nuggets are my favourite,” Irvine told the Sun. (I’ll keep their spelling, for the full effect). “ I share 20 with my boyfriend with chips.
“But I also like KFC and supermarket brands. My main meal is always chicken nuggets every day.”
While Irvine’s OD-ing on chicken nuggets on her bed of happy meal toys, on this side of the Atlantic Mrs. Obama is hitting the streets and neighborhood schools with her healthy eating campaign and the USDAs My Plate in hand. Her efforts are intended to showcase USDA improvements to school meal requirements that increase the availability of health food choices, and also seek to limit the total number of calories in an individual meal.
Those chicken nuggets Irvine is so fond of – and which plenty of public schools serve – contain 58g of fat and 926 calories in a 20 nugget meal – exceeding daily recommended intakes of 56g fat, and comprising almost half of the daily recommended 2,000 calories a day. If that’s not scary, maybe this video of what’s actually in that chicken nugget might do the trick. At the very least, the pink boa constrictor of mechanically separated chicken should be sufficiently horrifying. (Although the YouTube closed captioning on the piece is rather entertaining.)
But maybe it’s not horrifying enough for American sensibilities. Healthy eating guru Jamie Oliver, a TED Prize winner with a winning way of getting people to reconnect with good food, tried one of his food deconstruction programs with a group of American school children a couple of years ago. After carefully separating a whole chicken into its normally edible parts, Oliver then dramatically processed the remaining carcass, bones and all, in a blender while describing how chicken nuggets are made. Presenting the pink glop of chicken parts puree to the children, he asked them, “Who would eat this now?” After just a moment’s hesitation, every hand shot up.
A clearly thunderstruck Oliver then cooked up the patties and served them to the children, who happily ate them. Reflecting on his failed experiment later, he said, “What’s scary is that we’ve brainwashed our children so completely, so even though they know something is disgusting and gross, they’ll still eat it if it’s in that friendly little shape.”
Humans are creatures of habit and convenience. Give us the two together, and we’re set, even if it kills us, which eating out of convenience and habit might well do. So the battle for the Western world’s waist line and cholesterol levels rages on – with Jiminy Crickets like Mrs. Obama and Jamie Oliver perched on our shoulders cautioning common sense and restraint and beckoning us to the joys of healthy eating, and the fast food foxes luring us to the next donut and the promise of the immediate gratification of corn syrupy endorphins coursing sluggishly through our clogged arteries.
Maybe if we could see it for what it really is: Our lack of self control in our eating habits is at least partly symptomatic of a lack of control in other aspects of our lives, which leaves us open to manipulation and control by others. We fancy ourselves a “free people.” But we’re not. We’re often slaves to what anyone wants to sell us, from politics to processed poultry.
Pleasure Island is making chicken nugget donkeys of us all, and it will continue to do so until we see it for what it really is, take control of our health and our lives, and truly become free.
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All work by Theresa Willingham is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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