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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.
The problem with this attitude, is those engaged in dangerous activities often hurt or kill innocent people. It's best to not be so dismissive of ignorance and stupidity, and instead look to actually punish that activity.
To solidify my point, I no longer fear drunk drivers on the road. I fear the distracted idiots addicted to their cell phones who are becoming FAR more likely to cause harm to me or a loved one.
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.
What are pinks? Are they like noobs? Or are the casual bandwagon / trend hoppers?
Either way, fuck em.
The game has been great this past week with the event.
Fuck these people, I hope they die.
If mankind's historical record is of any relevance here, they most likely will, sooner or later, no need to hope.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
It's an abbreviation for Pokemon Goner, apparently.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
Grandparent wants the innocents to die, too.
He wants us all to die. All of us. Everyone. Preferably by Vaporeon.
Well, make up your mind already! Do you want to kill them or have sex with them?
#DeleteFacebook
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'
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.
Bernie's looking pretty good right about now isn't he? The only one nobody has accused of cozying up to the Ruskies.
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.
Somehow karma is broken in a lot of these cases. Often I read news like: “Texting driver kills family of 4, escapes unharmed”. For some reason, the idiots often get to tell the tale.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Also add up all the money lost to all other kinds of fun.
Ban fun for the good of the economy! Everyone must be mindless and willless drones!
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
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!
We're talking 'Amercia' here... Where walking more than 10m is simply out of the question.
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.
Exactly. What people do to themselves I don't care about, it's when they start affecting the rest of us that it becomes a problem.
America especially is an insanely "addictive" culture, but the afflicted need to recognize their problem and seek help
That's because they never had my lesson, which I called "Coca-Cola". When you're at a ball game and you are holding 2 cups of coca cola without caps on (this was int he old days) and some fucker ran in the hallway and bump into you. You are most likely to have spilled the coke on yourself because instinctively we are good people and really go out of our way to harm others. However my uncle taught me this great lesson. If the fuckers don't care, don't care for them. Next time, when someone bumps into you, spill the whole shit on them. They are also less likely to be running around like idiots in the future.
If you've been bullied like this in a crowded fast-food restaurant, you'd know. Many people won't give way and even if you try your best it's unavoidable that you see a collision. Instead, lift the tray up to the face height so that they gtfo cuz they know you can't see them and if they don't give way, their face will most likely be in danger. It all sounds anti-social but damn it works.
Are you saying that if you're about to get into a car wreck, you should do your best to kill the other driver?
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
No I am saying if you had the awareness to choose between killing the other driver vs steering left and getting hit by a truck, choose the former. And you need practice to make those decisions starting with coca cola, else your family will be very sad.
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I was playing the game for a while (until schedule and loss of interest took the fun out of it). I never walked into the road without looking even once; I will admit to colliding with other players of the same game a few times in a park area when not using the augmented reality feature due to battery-life and ease of playing. On the other hand, while driving, I have had several people walk in front of me while playing (the ball toss "finger-flick" is quite distinctive) without so much as a care in the world; however, I also had similar numbers of people with both thumbs on the phone, apparently composing something, suddenly walk in front of me. My reaction time is not excellent, so if driving conditions were different, there may very have been different outcomes than me stopping and tapping my horn: we (in each case) both were lucky. While the majority were embarrassed and/or apologetic and quickly removed themselves from the right-of-way, one particular case went so far as to showing the center-finger-salute and then repeatedly hitting my vehicle while continuing to yell about it being my fault for them not successfully capturing a Bellspout, at least until I drove off. Fortunately, I never had any incident concerning a younger child running into the right-of-way while apparently playing that game. I did see, however, a few (seemingly) responsible parents taking active measures to prevent disaster, e.g., calling back child before he/she arrives at road, placing themselves between child and road, or at least intercepting the child and extracting mobile device. I strongly hope that of the parents that have children playing the game, those samples are not outliers.
Pokemon Go (and Ingress for that matter), for those immersed in the game, is indeed a distraction in the same way social media and other electronic communications are. That said, I would hesitate to ban it or provide any unnecessary movement restrictions. I am prone to be easily distracted myself; however, I can choose to forgo playing a game, texting, etc for a few moments while it is unsafe to do so. That is my responsibility. I suspect that only a tiny minority of adolescents and adults have such significant developmental, functional, or cognitive conditions that would make it impossible (or at least exceedingly difficult) to train one's self to exercise caution. For those that would have such troubles (or anyone, just for doing so), if wanting to join in playing, go with a group of friends, have fun, and be safe.
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.
Exactly. What people do to themselves I don't care about, it's when they start affecting the rest of us that it becomes a problem.
America especially is an insanely "addictive" culture, but the afflicted need to recognize their problem and seek help
It's going to be rather hard to convince our society to label social media addiction as a "problem" that needs curing when that same society recognizes Attention Whore and Professional Narcissist as career goals. (see "Kardashian" for more details).
That's the problem with addiction; when it becomes so commonplace, even the most damaging activity can be viewed as "normal".
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'
Agreed. But we have a country where hard work has nothing to do with wealth and health care is viewed as a privilege rather than a right.
Frankly, America is doomed
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I'm all for fun. But you know what happens when you have too much fun.
Pinks and slack are subgenius terminology. Fake religion from the 80s. Fairly amusing as I remember, but probably did NOT age well. Reality exceeds satire,
Man, you really need that seminar!