This Is How Awkward You Look, When You Look Down On Your Phone While Walking.

22 volunteers were asked to dial a number on their mobile phone while walking on a treadmill for two minutes and the results produced some interesting findings.  The way that the experiment worked was by the volunteers wearing markers on their arms, torso, pelvis and legs, these were picked up on camera which measured certain movements such as knee flexion, hip movement and leg swing.

 What this showed was that the ‘phone users used strange exaggerated strides, these were bending of the knees on each step, also their ankles were completely flexed to prevent them from falling over any hazard that they might encounter. It appears that our brains ensure that we are protected through adopting a cautious gait, slowing down from our usual speed, and shuffling and increasing the stride whilst we are looking down at our mobiles.

Kelly Seymour of the department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Delaware when asked about the results of the experiment commented: “Our results suggest that when dialling a phone while walking, healthy adults adopt a more cautious gait pattern, which may limit the risk of falling.” He went on to say that not everyone adopts the peculiar gait and choose to walk as normal, we have all had at least one person walk into us whilst they have been too engrossed on their mobile device.

 In Belgium, they have decided that those who want to use their ‘phones whist walking should be separated and they have introduced ‘text walking lanes’ so that pedestrians were not irritated or endangered by people walking and texting at the same time.