Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Driver Killed a Pedestrian in Japan While Playing Pokemon Go (fortune.com)

Posted by msmash on from the mad-world dept.

An anonymous reader writes: One woman was killed and another injured. In what police are calling Japan's first death linked to Pokemon Go, a driver playing the smartphone game hit two pedestrians on Tuesday night, officials said. The collision broke the neck of one woman, killing her, and left another woman with a broken hip, the Wall Street Journal reports. Police in Tokushima, on the western Japanese island of Shikoku, told the Wall Street Journal the women were crossing the street when the car struck them. The man driving the car did not see them because was playing Pokemon Go.

3 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Thats it? by CaptainLard · · Score: 1, Interesting

    With a user base in the millions (hundreds of millions?), there has probably been many billions of human activity hours spent on pokemon go. The fact that it requires movement and so far there is only one known death attributed to it means overall its probably responsible for a huge reduction in fatalities!

  2. Re:What has Pokemon Go really go to do with this? by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Talking on the phone, Texting on the Phone, Playing a Game on the Phone, Eating your breakfast, Fiddling trying to read a map, punching in an address in a GPS, yelling at your kids..... All of this falls under distracted driving.

    There is only so much we can do to stop stupid. As stupid people are often ingenious in finding new ways to be stupid.

    The solution for distracted driving is getting rid of drivers. Self Driving Cars, Accessible Public Transit systems. Heck I would love it if there was a flatbed train along the interstate where you can park your car on it. And take the train the next 50 miles.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  3. Re:They apparently need to add another pop up by Atryn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I disagree entirely. Ingress is much BETTER than Pokemon Go in this respect. In Ingress, things don't move or disappear. If you see something on your scanner, you can pull off the road, park, deal with it, etc. If you miss it you can turn around and drive back and it will still be there. Pokemon, on the other hand, appear and disappear in completely random places with no predictability. This leads to much more sudden actions by the player and pressure to respond. This makes it much MORE dangerous, IMHO.

    --
    Come play Moral Decay!