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Pokemon Go Led To Increase In Traffic Deaths and Accidents, Says Study (arstechnica.com)
A new study from Purdue University uses detailed local traffic accident reports to suggest that Pokemon Go caused a marked increase in vehicle damages, injuries, and even deaths due to people playing the game while driving. Ars Technica reports: In the provocatively titled "Death by Pokemon Go" (which has been shared online but has yet to be peer-reviewed), Purdue professors Mara Faccio and John J. McConnell studied nearly 12,000 accident reports in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, in the months before and after Pokemon Go's July 6, 2016 launch. The authors then cross-referenced those reports with the locations of Pokestops in the county (where players visit frequently to obtain necessary in-game items) to determine whether the introduction of a Pokestop correlated with an increase in accident frequency, relative to intersections that didn't have them. While the incidence of traffic accidents increased across the county after Pokemon Go's introduction, that increase was a statistically significant 26.5 percent greater at intersections within 100 meters of a Pokestop, compared to those farther away. All told, across the county, the authors estimate 134 extra accidents occurred near Pokestops in the 148-day period immediately after the game came out, compared to the baseline where those Pokestops didn't exist. That adds up to nearly $500,000 in vehicle damage, 31 additional injuries, and two additional deaths across the county, based on extrapolation from the accident reports.
The study uses a regression model to account for potential confounding variables like school breaks and inclement weather, which could cause variation separate from Pokemon Go. The model also compares Pokestops to Pokegyms (where it was nearly impossible to play while driving) to account for the possibility that generally increased traffic to Pokemon Go locations was leading to more accidents, even among drivers who stopped and parked before playing. In all cases, though, being able to compare to intersections without a Pokestop and to the same dates the year before, helped provide natural control variables for the study.
The study uses a regression model to account for potential confounding variables like school breaks and inclement weather, which could cause variation separate from Pokemon Go. The model also compares Pokestops to Pokegyms (where it was nearly impossible to play while driving) to account for the possibility that generally increased traffic to Pokemon Go locations was leading to more accidents, even among drivers who stopped and parked before playing. In all cases, though, being able to compare to intersections without a Pokestop and to the same dates the year before, helped provide natural control variables for the study.
Fuck these people, I hope they die.
All has unfolded in accordance with Team Rocket's Plan!
They studied the period of peak pink popularity of the game. Now that the pinks have stopped playing the phenomenon is over.
Andho can be upset about a bunch of pinks getting run over? The game is nice and slack now.
I've already killed and maimed several people but I have a bitchin' collection of pocket monsters.
Yeah, the camera drains the battery faster, but it's just a friggen *game* for crying out loud.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Life is dangerous. Not criticizing the study. I love the study but you need to consider how many hours people were playing Pokemon Go. If people in the USA spent 2% of their waking hours playing Pokemon Go then it might be safer than the typical alternative. If they spent 0.0002% then it would be a deadly game. Labrador retrievers send more children to the hospital every year than any other dog but it's because they are by far the most common dog to interact with children. My local school board changed the design of the school playgrounds, saw head injuries reduced by 60% and claimed it was a huge success. The new play grounds are so boring that the kids who were failing off them (age 10+) completely stopped using them. I'm also wondering what the diabetes rates will be like in 30 years. Risk is hard to get right. Politically it might be impossible but studies like this are at least half the information we need to get.
...or was it irresponsible driving? When will we actually start blaming the people who make stupid decisions, rather than the tools they use?
Pokémon Go doesn't play by the same rules as Simon Says.
I'm pretty sure the solution for that would be to hold the phone and the top of the steering wheel with the same hand and then it's easy to keep glancing at your phone while driving.
I get the paper has data (based on police reports) from 2015-2016 in Tippecanoe County, but how does the researcher apply this to the rest of the USA? Is Tippecanoe County somehow perfectly representative of the USA, as is Tippecanoe County typically used to study federal trends in traffic safety and fatality?
Of course we could help nature along by hacking PMG so it only generates the really cool critters in the middle of the street.
At the peak of the craze, pedestrians wandering around in zig-zag patterns staring at their phones near a post office. Almost hit one.
Forget the Pokémons and give us a virtual Nurse Joy rated 18+!
#DeleteFacebook
society didn't end the survival of the fittest, it just modified it. Who would have guessed that Pokemon people are not the fittest! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Yeah. It wouldnâ(TM)t stop drivers from being dumb, because it wouldnâ(TM)t be able to tell the difference between a passenger and a driver, but it could still mitigate pedestrian accidents caused by them not being aware of their surroundings
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Now I so want to go paint my car to look like a pokemon.
Now add up all the money lost to the economy from people playing video games and consider maybe Washington isn't to blame for all the country's problems. Usually it keeps the perpetrators off the streets so it's tolerated. Addictive as crack games can be.
They seem to have anticipated and corrected for all the routine criticism. Seems like it is going to be approved for publication.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Is Tippecanoe County somehow perfectly representative of the USA, as is Tippecanoe County typically used to study federal trends in traffic safety and fatality?
Tippecanoe County is indeed half the equation. But once you combine those statistics with additional data from Tyler, Texas - you get a perfect analog for the United States as a whole.
#DeleteChrome
Oh, now I see how you guys do it; To simulate traffic in Canada we just tape a bunch of cats together.
I probably said "What a f****** $random_bad_word_for_different_cars_stickers_plates_etc" a lot more than normal last summer for a few weeks. I saw people driving the wrong way on the road, stopping in the middle of the road, lots of swerving by oncoming traffic, some people walking in the road as if the it wasn't there, and people generally not paying attention more than normal. They had the town ticketing crew blocking one of the lake side train parking lots, and I had to move the cones to get out leading to a conversation with one of them, but I needed to get home it was Friday and I resisted driving my truck over the curb to get out opting to move the cones. Was all good though and laughs and then some complaining about the crowds and how dangerous it was becoming and how some people were robbed.
It only lasted a few weeks but I would love to see something like this drive people out more often, it really got a lot of people in to parks regardless of the increased dangers of lots of people out and about. Better lightning would solve a lot of the danger problems on the road and in parks. LED's are so much more efficient they should put them all over walk-able parks.
Who the fuck is old enough to have a driver's license and still cares about cartoon easter-egg hunts? It almost makes drink-driving look respectable.
This is the true value of a creimer drive-by posting from one of his cashew accounts.
NSFW
You hatch eggs and get buddy pokemon candy while walking. I have it on during my 2 mile lunch walk. I would not have it on if I had to stare at the screen for the majority of my walk. If I did, I'd probably end my walk with a major headache and possible walking into a few pedestrians or cars.
Natural selection wasn't working well for humans, so we had to help it a bit.
I've never played it, but as far as I know, Pokémon Go only works at walking pace, since it's meant to be played while walking.
But there tends to be more pokestops in higher populated/urban areas...
Wow two years late on that research... um, the craze has kinda died down now.
Switch it Off,Switch it On[SOSO] Solves 95% of all IT problems!
How odd. Cats you say? I always assumed you used the moose that freely roam your city streets.
They are based on population density... but of course there will be more accidents in places where more people go more often.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfc42Pb5RA8
How odd. Cats you say? I always assumed you used the moose that freely roam your city streets.
They are too hard to use in multiples, people don't agree as to the plural, and that leads to death fights in the streets in the Mooses-Meese debate, then you never get the scientific data.
Your joke was not lost on me.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The study claims 2 additional deaths in a 148 day period; extrapolated across the nation, that's 2 deaths * 2.5 (number of 148 day periods per year) * 3,000 counties equals 15,000 additional deaths for the entire country, plus or minus the margin of error from the study. Which they did not publish. And has not come to pass.
The above, of course, is horribly assumptive, as not all counties have the same population, the same number of Pokemon Go players, the same traffic patterns or densities, etc. Footnote 17 in the paper explains the actual math used, which is revealed to also be assumptive, but at much lower levels of details, which is partly why the study only predicts and additional 250 deaths, nation-wide.
I know at least one obese person who started going on regular walks because of this silly game and has kept up with the habit to this day.
It's still less dangerous than playing high school football.
But it provided a valuable opportunity to thin the herd !
That's my point... the app would actively discourage people from constantly staring at the screen while walking. It would do nothing to stop people from playing while driving (because it cannot reasonably tell the difference between a passenger who should be allowed to play and driver who should not), but it's still better than nothing.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Anonymous Cashews is a sockpuppet of previously banned user creimer. Who now also posts as cdreimer. You can help by reporting his posts to management
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I've made a copy here so you can see. It's actually worse than I'd have expected him to say
http://archive.is/Bfzo1
Look at how hard he tries to justify the marriage of a 16 year old mexican girl to a 50 year old american. He explains over and over that we're overreacting and that he's not a pedo. But all he does is reveal that he's probably a bigger pedo than we thought and he doesn't even think there is anything wrong with it.
Go away creimer
If you think Pokemon Go is bad, wait until there's mobs of kids casting spells with bluetooth wands when the new Harry Potter AR game comes out.
AR games are where it's at for mobile devices now... not to mention all the fitness 'games' (which are granted, not so intrusive)
The solution frankly is either to restrict game play to 'safe' areas (low traffic areas, parks, etc) or to hurry up and get everyone into self-driving cars. I don't see either of these solutions happening soon.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://archive.is/Bfzo1
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Creimer says it's ok for 50 year old men to marry 16 year old girls. It's a dream come true even.
Obviously we're overreacting