We’ve all witnessed or been party to it—someone walking into a wall or another person because he or she was too distracted by a phone to pay attention to the surroundings. The Japanese have even coined a term for it: Aruki Sumaho.
Comical as these scenes may seem—like something out of a modern day “Three Stooges”—in Japan, “smartphone walking” has become a serious safety concern. As many as 18 people stumbled onto train railways in 2011 while preoccupied by a phone, and this year a young boy fell off a train platform in Tokyo while looking at his screen.
Although some perpetrators acknowledge that staring at a screen makes “you lose a sense of what’s around you,” others argue that they can’t finish their work if they don’t check their emails while on the go.
As a response to the ongoing incidents caused by smartphone walking, companies and government institutions are creating Aruki Sumaho policies and warning campaigns, according to some evil "news" corp...
*There are good people, and those who walk and text...there is no overlap.
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