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01 June 2020Pedons with their eyes glued to their mobile phones that inevitably stumble and fall or hit other pedestrians or cause large and small accidents. There are those who cross the street without looking, those who bang on the street lamps or against other people. In Yamato, a city in Japan of about 300,000 inhabitants, near Yokohama (southwest of Tokyo), the city council proposed a law to the city council to ban the use of mobile phones while walking.

"The number of people using smartphones has grown rapidly, as has the number of accidents caused by distraction" in a densely populated area. "We want to prevent this, said municipal official Masaaki Yasumi who added that if the law were passed it would be the first of its kind in Japan. But Yasumi added that the rule will not provide for punishment:" We hope the ban will empower people with regard to this danger. "The ban will be widely publicized with messages and billboards and should enter into force from July.

In 2014, the main Japanese telephone operator Ntt Docomo estimated that the average field of view of a pedestrian fixing his smartphone is five per one hundred of what our eyes normally see. The company then ran a computer simulation of what would happen if 1,500 people used the frenetic pedestrian crossing of Shibuya, Tokyo, while everyone is looking at their smartphone. The results showed that at least two thirds of people would not have been able to get to the other side without incident, with 446 collisions, 103 fallen people and 21 who dropped their phones. The number of accidents between pedestrians and people who use the phone while cycling is also increasing in Japan. In some cases, the families of the victims ask for up to 100 million yen ($ 1 million) in compensation.