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Driver Killed a Pedestrian in Japan While Playing Pokemon Go (fortune.com)
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.
Blame the subclass of humanity that finds it acceptable to operate their devices while driving.
The headline should really be "Unsafe driver kills pedestrian". If it wasn't Pokemon Go, it would have been texting or some other action that caused this muppet to kill someone.
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Stop contradicting yourself!
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Press here to buy two hours of legal consultation after killing someone playing this game.
You can also get it to pop up merely by switching to something else so Pokemon Go is in the background, continue walking, and then switch back to the game so that when it updates your new position it decides you've moved from the old position instantly. The great thing is that once you've dismissed the popup once, I don't think it comes up again in the same session, so if it triggers while walking to your car (since it can easily trigger when you leave a building and the GPS accuracy is just bad so you're bouncing all over the place) it won't trigger while you're driving.
Other people say "don't blame the game, blame the driver" but I disagree. Niantic has created a game where playing it while moving quickly is an advantage. You can hit more "pokestops" faster, collect more items, and go through more potential Pokemon spawns by playing in a car. Sure, you can argue that's fine if you're a passenger, but what they should have done is make it so that moving "quickly" like that DOESN'T give you an advantage. Make it so that the best way to play is by walking, not driving.
But Ingress has the same problem, so I'm not surprised Pokemon Go does too. It's even worse in Ingress - the best way to collect what's basically "fuel" that powers every action you take is by driving, since it tends to collect along roads for some reason, and you can still hit portals to get items as long as you don't break 35 MPH.