It is a scene that has become common all over the world: pedestrians glued to the screen of their smartphones, eventually bumping into themselves or worse, causing accidents. A Japanese city hopes to remedy this by prohibiting the use of the telephone while walking. A text to this effect was submitted Monday to the municipal council of the city of Yamato, near Yokohama (southwest of Tokyo). A decision is expected in late June.
The number of accidents "exploded"
If this measure is adopted, "it will be the first ban of its kind in Japan," assured AFP Masaaki Yasumi, a member of the local administration. In this densely populated city in the outskirts of Tokyo, "the number of people using smartphones has exploded and with it the number of accidents," said Yasumi. "This is what we want to avoid".
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The future regulation does not, however, provide for sanctions against those who are unable to take their eyes off their screens. Rather, the authorities rely on information campaigns to enforce the ban. "We hope the ban will make everyone aware of the dangers," said Yasumi.
Narrowed field of vision
In 2014, a study by the Japanese mobile operator NTT DoComo had estimated that the field of vision of a pedestrian looking at his screen narrowed by 95% compared to a normal view. The group had performed a computer simulation to see what would happen if 1,500 people crossed the famous, always crowded crossroads of Shibuya, in the heart of Tokyo, while looking at their smartphones.
The results had shown that two thirds of these pedestrians would not have been able to cross without incident, with 446 collisions, 103 people knocked down and ... 21 broken phones. The number of accidents involving people using their smartphones while riding their bikes is also increasing in Japan.