Gareth John's Blog

One Step Beyond!

Heard this? One in ten of us has admitted injuring ourselves in the last year while texting or chatting on our mobiles. Across the UK, that’s a total of six million people stumbling into lamp-posts, bollards, litter bins or even Amy Winehouse while using their phones on a night out. Quite a stat, isn’t it?!

Even better is the cunning way those brilliant health & safety people are trying to sort the problem. A new pilot scheme, the first in the country, is starting along London’s curry hot-spot Brick Lane. Special “safe text” pads are being attached to lamp-posts along the famous street to help soften the blow & reduce the risk of embarrassing injury when we inadvertently smack straight into a bus-shelter on a Friday night. Love it!

Just imagine turning up for work with a black eye or your arm in a sling the following day & then trying to put it all down to a mobile phone & an unfortunately placed kerb. Nobody’s going to believe you. And it’s men who are apparently more at risk than women when it comes this kind of cell-phone calamity. But then we never were any good at multi-tasking.

Personally, I think I’m on pretty safe ground here. I still text like a wrinkly. Try as I might, predictive text just NEVER seems to work for me & I always end up with “taramasalata” as a suggested option. Big fan of Greek food, me, but must confess this isn’t a word I tend to use in a lot of conversations.

As for other ways to help fix this phone faux pas, here’s one of my favourites. One in four of us support the introduction of “mobile lanes” on pavements. A bit like a cycle-lane these would guide you safely round the road-side danger spots. But then again, you could always just look up!

Anyway, I can’t help thinking that the introduction of a “mobile lane” could bring us a step closer to congestion-charging for pavements... let’s face it, patching up those injuries must be costing A&E Departments a small fortune. Mind you, in the barmy David Brent world of `incentivising’ people, there might also be a way to help reduce the cost. Perhaps they could offer a small discount if you actually manage to AVOID injury. And an even bigger one if you actually manage to send the text to the right person! Or even a HUGE discount if your text doesn’t include the name of a Greek cod-based pinkish dip in your message – I’d be quids in!

So, here’s to safe walking... and safe texting. Brings a whole new meaning to “mind the gap”.

Gxx

Posted by Gareth John on March 05, 2008 at 09:33AM

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