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Intexticated: Texting Teen Falls Into Manhole

Full story here.

The family is planning a lawsuit, notes the story.

Pursuant to my post on roadway factors, maybe we need to start building “forgiving sidewalks”?

(Horn honk to Nathan)

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 12th, 2009 at 7:48 am and is filed under Pedestrians, Traffic safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Intexticated: Texting Teen Falls Into Manhole”

  1. Josh R Says:
    July 12th, 2009 at 10:12 am

    Granted that the proper sequence of tasks for the sewer workers should always be “Set up safety and warning barriers, THEN open manhole.” but still, the strident refusal to realize that it’s your responsibility to watch where you’re putting your feet makes me weep for the future.

    I wish the workers had set up the cones properly, and that she had walked in between two of them before falling in. As it is, the stupid lawsuit will likely succeed, thus convincing people that they have no responsibility for their own safety. :P

  2. Rich Wilson Says:
    July 12th, 2009 at 5:44 pm

    Um, what if she had been blind? I’m not sure a sweeping cane would have detected the open manhole.

  3. Tom Vanderbilt Says:
    July 13th, 2009 at 5:58 am

    I should only point out that what interested me about this item was not the liability of ConEd, etc., but the distraction that is possible when one is engaged with a mobile device; if it compromises our ability to safely walk in the environment, something our long evolutionary history has given us good tools to do, you can only imagine the problem in doing something more evolutionarily novel, and much more complex — driving — while using a mobile device.

  4. Jack Says:
    July 13th, 2009 at 7:08 am

    I’ve noticed for a few year that pedestrians on cell phones walk into each other and take a step or two into an intersection when the crosswalk sign is red. The definition of “accident” seems to grow in concert with acts of irresponsibility.

  5. spiderleggreen Says:
    July 13th, 2009 at 11:19 am

    Enterprising little gal.

  6. twilight boy Says:
    December 4th, 2009 at 5:27 pm

    I don

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How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

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