Latest example of the dangers of smartphone obsession caught on video
We’ve all heard the warnings about walking while keeping your eyes and nose in your smartphone — yes, it’s not just distracted drivers to blame for a rise in pedestrian deaths in recent years.
Well, one engrossed smartphone user in La Crescenta, Calif., almost learned about the potential dangers the hard way. Here, he is caught on news station KTLA’s helicopter cameras nearly walking smack into a black bear in a driveway. I’m hard-pressed to believe that whatever was on his phone could possibly have been more interesting than seeing a bear crawling around the neighborhood.
When you see incidents like this (or the infamous oblivious cellphone user who fell into a Pennsylvania mall water fountain last year) it’s no wonder that researchers are develping apps such as Dartmouth College’s WalkSafe, an Android app that exploits a mobile phone’s back camera to detect approaching vehicles and alert the user, via vibration or sound, of the impending danger. It also uses the phone’s accelerometer sensors. The researchers used machine learning algorithms to allow the phone to detect vehicles during active calls. Studies of the app have shown it delivers few false positives, though doesn’t identify all oncoming vehicles.
It also helps explain why some are painting ugly scenarios for those sporting new creations such as Google Glasses, designed to run on Android and beam text and images directly to your eyeballs.
Circle Bob on Google+, if you can bear it.
