Yamato becomes Japan's first city to 'ban' use of phones while walking | Hacker News Reader

Yamato becomes Japan's first city to 'ban' use of phones while walking

japantimes.co.jp

143 pointschewz123 comments

In general I find people using their phones whilst walking to be a nuisance, but I'm still not particularly in favour of this.

There are at least two legitimate use cases that don't cause too many problems:

1. Using your phone as an actual phone (i.e., an audio only conversation with the thing held to your ear, or with a headset).

2. Using it as a navigational aid. If I'm not too sure where I'm going I'll often use either Google or Apple Maps to set up directions before I start walking. I'll then put the phone in my pocket and just pull it out from time to time to check I'm still heading in the right direction.

The real problems are caused by people reading, playing games, having video calls, or filming themselves (or others) whilst walking. They tend to dawdle, lose awareness of their surroundings and others around them, and in general behave like absolute goobers. Doing these things whilst navigating stairs or escalators is particularly aggravating - not to mention dangerous.

This doesn't appear to be limited to any particular demographic or age group that I can see.

> In general I find people using their phones whilst walking to be a nuisance, but I'm still not particularly in favour of this.

Makes me wonder, if you bump into them and they drop their phone and break it, who is responsible?

What if they were standing still and texting in the middle of the sidewalk?

Until the legal system adjudicates, it is ambiguous what responsibility is borne by the two parties; also unclear are expectations or assumptions regarding accountability, foreseeability, and preventability of actions or effects.

If I could not have reasonably prevented you from running into me, it isn’t my fault that I didn’t avoid it, but it may still be my fault for moving in a manner in which I can’t respond to situations outside my control. Likewise, if could have acted differently to forestall, reduce, or prevent a problem from occurring, and yet I did not act in a way which would avert known unwanted results, I am not necessarily culpable, but I may be found lacking in grounds to blame the other for also not acting differently.

Good Samaritan laws[1] try to embody this implicit social expectation, but enforcement of these laws can lead to its own sort of selective moral policing.[2][3]

Many of these same social undercurrents also seem relevant to the new focus on social justice and cancel culture. It seems that those being judged often feel that they are judged too harshly, and bristle at being judged at all. I hope we can find ways to stop pointing fingers and start linking and building. It’s far easier and quicker to tear down than to build, and its impact is just as fleeting, thus the need for more finger pointing. Outrage is a renewable resource, but we as moral agents are only capable of feeling so much before we become desensitized to it in some way.

I worry that one day people won’t be able to care about bad things happening in the world, because they don’t relate to a shared society at all. I hope for a future society[4] where social and civic participation at the individual level is collaborative and welcomed, and where all perspectives are judged on their merits outside an echo chamber.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue

[3] https://www.policeone.com/police-jobs-and-careers/articles/a...

[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20170221125058/http://lareviewof...

Not necessarily practical for everyday use, but can you navigate using earphones? I tried that when negotiating European cities like Basel, and Copenhagen on electric scooters, and it worked really well. Just start navigation, and preferably don't play music so you'd only get cues when you have to change course.

I actually got pulled over by a police officer for something unrelated, and he was fine with the earphones when I explained I wasn't playing music.

I’m sure there are some use cases where you absolutely need a screen.

Phone calls and maps directions though are actually very nice, and I would argue superior, using just a headset instead of the screen.

The usage of mobile screens differs across the world as well. In my experience, in south and east asia people are glued to their screens much more than in other parts of the world (probably because the rest of the world still catches up). So such a rule might not seem as necessary in other parts of the world, yet.

I agree with you but most people really are not doing #1 or #2 most of the time... Your own experience as my example.

It's a classic "why we can't have nice things" problem.

Regarding #2, you are supposed.to move out of the way before you pull up your phone to check for direction. That sounds reasonable to me.

>1. Using your phone as an actual phone (i.e., an audio only conversation with the thing held to your ear, or with a headset).

There's no indication this bans audio calls, given it specifically calls out smart phones I'd wager that's not their intent.

>2. Using it as a navigational aid. If I'm not too sure where I'm going I'll often use either Google or Apple Maps to set up directions before I start walking. I'll then put the phone in my pocket and just pull it out from time to time to check I'm still heading in the right direction.

So be respectful and step out of the flow of foot traffic to check it? They didn't say you couldn't use your smartphone in public, they said not to do it while you're walking. I'm sure they got sick of idiots either running into other people or walking into traffic with their faces glued to their phones. Can't say I blame them.

Phones can be a real-time navigational aid for the blind[1]. This requires the phone to record your surroundings, which means either holding your phone while walking or making a holster for the phone on the front of your shirt/jacket.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_AI

There are exceptions to pretty much everything. I doubt their intent is to punish the blind and I'm sure if they ever put any teeth behind the law there would be a carve out. No different then the countless "no pets allowed" laws that still allow seeing eye dogs.

CarPlay ==> walkPlay

>1. Using your phone as an actual phone (i.e., an audio only conversation with the thing held to your ear, or with a headset).

As a side note, the thing held to one's ear has become an issue, it is not the first time, lately, that I see people absentmindedly getting off the sidewalk to cross the road (of course not on zebra crossings or with a green light at an intersection) while holding a (large) phone to their ear thus covering with the phone and/or their hand the side from which the traffic comes, i.e. zeroing the possibility to see an incoming vehicle.

Beside the distraction caused by the conversation, it is dangerous as they have their peripheral view completely blocked.

Responding here because several people have brought this up: why are you assuming I'm not stepping out of the flow to both set up walking directions and to check my phone? Just because I didn't say it explicitly doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but I fail to see the reason why every HN comment I write needs to become a giant essay in order to cover every possible objection up-front. I've just moaned about people using their phones whilst walking: I'm hardly like to stand in the middle of a busy pavement whilst I set sort out directions in Google Maps. I also didn't say that I took a dump and a shower before I left the house today but, if you absolutely insist on making an assumption, it would be much more sensible to assume that I did than that I didn't.

My dream is that one day, everyone will see the imaginary lines down the sidewalk that I do. Keep to the right, just like you're driving, and even someone texting while walking won't run into. Sadly, these lines are imaginary and while people tend to keep right, don't take it very seriously.

A deeper issue is how much of the space between buildings is dedicated to private vehicles. When the sidewalk is 6 feet wide and you're required to social distance by 6 feet past sidewalk cafes and garbage waiting to be picked up, there is no room for pedestrians -- texting or otherwise. Perhaps we should turn the two 8-foot free parking lanes into pedestrian lanes. Then you'd never even notice people walking while texting. Or running 2-abroad. Or kids playing with balls.

It will never happen, though. We need our cars, and more importantly, we need to park them near our high-density housing ;)

I believe in Japan, people walk on the left side.

Many people in Japan don't drive so they don't really think about "sides" like people who come from car cultures do.

Interesting! That’s a bit surprising to me. In Japan they have the yellow tiles with bumps near the center of most city sidewalks that I always assumed was a kind of lane system. If it’s not to create lanes, what are those tiles for?

They are tactile paving for blind and partially sighted people.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactile_paving

Lanes for the blind.

They come in contact with it though, from those driving around them. Then there are other customs, like standing on the left side of escalators (except for Osaka, where it used to be the right side, but now it's mostly the side the line is already on). From my personal experience people in the major cities seem to prefer dodging to the left, all things being equal.

I didn't say anything about cars and as Hamuko has pointed out, it predates cars. Wikipedia supports this claim, though doesn't cite it.

This. As a driver and a long-term resident in Tokyo, I try to stay to the left as a pedestrian, but I estimate the odds of the other party doing the same are 50/50.

Yeah, and you also see people being paid to direct the flow of human traffic at the super busy stations.

They drive on the left side because they walk on the left side. They say the origin for left-hand traffic in Japan comes from the Edo period where samurai, who wore their swords on the left side, would walk on the left side of the road to avoid clashing swords with each other.

Left hand side vs right hand side has a really complicated history. A lot of Europe was left hand side first as well, although I just learned from Wikipedia that that might be myth:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic

Japanese sidewalls are rather paradoxical: where rules and order are so valued, pedestrians are in chaos. People walk 4 abreast, walk in bicycle lanes, randomly change direction without looking etc.

Escalators are even stranger. There are signs everywhere telling people to stand on both sides. These are completely ignoreed. People fill up one side completely and leave the other side empty for the occasional walker.

The escalator one depends on how busy it is. During rush hour or when the line at the "entrance" begins to grow longer the free side gets a lot more traffic, though usually people will still try to walk on that side in order to not block the "fast lane".

^ This guy has really been in Japan! There is no standard of walking on the left or the right. People don't follow vehicle driving protocols because many of them never have or will drive. "Paradoxical" is absolutely the best way to describe Japanese pedestrian behavior.

It depends...

60-Hz AC in Osaka and 50 Hz in Tokyo. Standing on the left of the escalator in Tokyo and on the right in Osaka. Oh Japan..

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/07/19/reference/japan...

https://kotaku.com/its-hard-for-japan-to-change-its-escalato...

> Keep to the right, just like you're driving, and even someone texting while walking won't run into.

Do you have different lanes for people who walk at different speeds? Is there one for runners? Am I still allowed to stop and take in the sights?

> Do you have different lanes for people who walk at different speeds?

Just like when driving, if there is enough space, different lanes should form to accommodate different walking speeds. If the sidewalk is too narrow, it's okay to pass, but don't interfere with the other direction of traffic, and don't prevent others from passing you.

Families with strollers are the Hummers of sidewalks.

Motorized mobility scooters are the ones to watch out for.

>Keep to the right,

Do you then switch to the left when walking in the UK? :)

IMO (in my observation) natives actually instinctively do pick the side of the pavement to walk on as if they were cars on the road...

It's fun then when you have Chinese or American tourists in Japan (Japan is right hand drive)...

That makes sense, as it makes the pedestrians closest to the road face incoming traffic. That makes temporarily stepping onto the road when pedestrian traffic gets too busy for the available width of the sidewalk a lot safer.

(Some, possibly many, countries use the same logic for setting rules for pedestrians walking on the side of a road without sidewalks)

And you likely know it, but in Japan cars drive on the left.

One of my favorite things about NYC is the built-in etiquette of "pulling over" when you need to putz with your phone.

You could always tell who didn't live there by who stopped flat on the street and blocked traffic.

I live in the Bay Area and do that, but it definitely seems like a lot of people don’t here.

Usually I try to stay parallel to other physical barriers like mailboxes, trees, garbage cans, etc. so there is zero possibility I’m in the way of a normal walking path.

There’s a Nathan Pyle comic with this advice: https://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/business_insid...

Yes, I think putting restrictions in place on pedestrians is more likely to have an effect of encouraging more people into cars. Before worrying about what could happen to someone walking around on their phone, how about worrying what could happen due to all the drivers on their phones? Or, as you say, give pedestrians so much space it becomes a non-issue. Why have we given >90% of public space to cars? (I'm assuming your last sentence is tongue-in-cheek.) If we had to redesign society from the bottom up, there is no way we would have done it like this.

And cue the downvotes from everyone who can't imagine life without their car :/

Where to walk is also a cultural thing. In many places in Asia, groups of people don't form lanes, but walk "through" each other.

A bit like how in some places there is less of a reliance on traffic rules, instead people watch out for each other more.

Friends have told me that in India you can just cross busy streets by foot and cars will let you pass. If you're from India, please chime in ;-) Here in Germany many would stop at the last possible moment just to make it clear you broke the rules.

If I could pick a skill for everyone out in traffic, I'd definitely choose empathy and patience over seeing imaginary lines.

You can cross busy streets in India on foot - it comes with practice. But doesn't mean drivers wouldn't be aggressive towards you. Pedestrians are almost never given right of way even on designated crosswalks.

> Here in Germany many would stop at the last possible moment just to make it clear you broke the rules.

> If I could pick a skill for everyone out in traffic, I'd definitely choose empathy and patience over seeing imaginary lines.

As someone from Bangladesh, I couldn’t disagree more. Give me rule following Germans any day of the week.

It's an odd kind of rule following though, that includes driving at seventy kilometers an hour down a narrow street just because it's permitted, or roaring past a cyclist with a kid on the bike just because that's also legal.

I don't know if my native country (UK) has unusually good drivers, or if the germans are unusually bad, but my feeling is that german drivers are very good at following rules, and also quite good at killing pedestrians and crashing.

PS: just checked it up on wikipedia, and the data half-heartedly supports my position, depending on what metric you think is relevant. The German death rate from road traffic is relatively low, but the 'road fatality per kilometer' is relatively high. So essentially, when germans do drive, they frequently kill people, but thankfully, they don't do so much driving as other nations do.

>> Where to walk is also a cultural thing.

In NYC (especially in certain parts of NYC of all the places I've been) it is not only a cultural thing but a power-cultural thing. Some people "expect" others to move out of their way, often taking extra space on a sideways or purposefully walking so you need to bunch up against a wall (or jump temporarily into the road.) I've even had someone scold me (while I had right of way on the right side) for not being more courteous.

You can only imagine the sort of behaviors some of these people exhibit in their offices when there is a real hierarchy or power dynamic.

Reminds me of this image from the London blackout [1]. They were more strict about walking on the correct side (in this case left) so people wouldn't run into each other in the dark.

[1] https://geographicalimaginations.files.wordpress.com/2017/09...

If a child, woman or old person is coming the other way then I take the side nearest to the traffic to protect them

This whole "in a perfect world everyone would walk just like me" is just an attempt to justify the constant loss of walking space to cars since the 1950s.

My dream is that one day pedestrianised spaces would be large enough to allow everyone to use it without compromises.

There is no walking area large enough to spare you from being mindful of others.

Demanding common courtesy from others in shared spaces isn't an attempt to justify anything, much less our car culture.

In London, they used to have a prohibition against absent-mindedly using your phone while walking enforced by privateer motorcyclists who would confiscate your phone.

Sadly that tradition is alive and well. Angel is a particular hot spot for it

I still remember getting my phone swiped on the sidewalk across from my favorite restaurant on Chapel Market.

(There are many words I've adopted since moving here. "Pavement" is not one of them.")

Anecdotally, for some reason, random swiping and lifting of electronics, laptops, etc. seems more prevalent in Europe than in the US. Whenever I've heard of a colleague's laptop of whatever being lifted at dinner, it's always Barcelona, Amsterdam, Brussels, etc. rather than San Francisco or New York City. I'm sure it happens in those places too but it seems less common.

I’ve lived in some really crappy places in the US, but the only place I’ve often seen and experienced people committing obvious crimes in broad daylight was Europe. It was pretty weird having someone struggle to unzip my backpack while walking down the street. I bound the zippers with a lock and they couldn’t get in, but I guess they didn’t notice because they really fought to get it open.

Seeing obvious pickpockets and scammers operating 10 feet away from police officers while being directly observed was what really blew my mind though. I hear loads of people say they’re disappointed with Europe and the crime is overwhelming these days, but man, they’re not kidding. It’s insane what’s tolerated so openly there. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had valuables stolen randomly while in Western Europe for short periods.

I suppose it could be cultural in some way. One also wonders if it's a reflection of the situation with (especially) urban police departments and maybe gun ownership more broadly. If you know that snatching a laptop or handbag could leave you beaten, tased, or shot that's probably something of a disincentive even for not so bright petty thieves.

The guns could go either way. If someone starts mugging you in the US, there's a very real possibility a gun shows up if you try and fight back.

I personally think it is influenced by differences in the types of organized crime we have. In the US, gangs and similar organizations generally don't bother with organizing petty crime like swiping electronics. They're more focused on drugs, prostitution, etc. In Europe, though, that's not the case [1].

[1] https://www.europol.europa.eu/crime-areas-and-trends/crime-a...

I'm quite certain human trafficking and drug smuggling occur in Europe too.

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2017/10/some-6000-people-a-yea...

I live in one of those places (Amsterdam). It's because this isn't a practical problem for anyone living there, so why should we care to spend our tax money and police attention on it instead of crime we ourselves are affected by?

Pick-pocketing in any of the places mentioned upthread isn't some general city-wide or societal problem. It's narrowly isolated to a few tourist-trap neighborhoods, and even there only then to people who're obvious marks. Such as slow-moving tourists swarming around in groups all wearing backpacks and oblivious to their surroundings.

If you look at actual statistics on crime petty theft isn't some rampant issue in these societies.

>If you look at actual statistics on crime petty theft isn't some rampant issue in these societies.

How do you gather actual statistics when the locals don't pay attention or care, police see it but take no action, and some of the main victims (tourists) are gone in a few days and don't have the time or language skills to make a report?

My guess is that major european cities have a higher level of foot traffic which means you're more likely to have streets out of the way where a thief can make a quick escape but still find enough people walking along.

For what it's worth, I'm aware of one example of a coworker having headphones randomly swiped in Dublin (where we live), one person who got pickpocketed while on holiday in Madrid, and one person who got pickpocketed while on a work trip in San Francisco in recent years.

I think in the US it is a better risk to break into cars and steal their contents since most people have cars and treat them as an extension of their home.

Anecdotally speaking, that's because those are tourist trap cities. the person IS a tourist, is in the most touristic neighborhood possible, often in the center, and is behaving like a total tourist.

It's not a European thing, it's an "I'M OBVIOUS" thing.

I see your anecdote and raise you a "European Tourist gets off streetcar at 6th and Market St. in SF, because it's allegedly the city center and thus must be a great tourist location"...

*I'm originally American and I've lived all over Europe for over 15 years.

Heh. SF has a lot of problems these days--to the point where I'm quite a bit less enthusiastic about visiting it than I used to be. However, I suspect a lot of the "What a s*hole" reaction and general negativity you get from a lot of business travelers in particular is that they're mostly working and staying in the immediate vicinity of the Moscone which is basically the armpit of the city. (Which one might reasonably not expect to be the case especially with the Civic Center and main shopping area there too.)

People are always doing the snatch-and-run in Berkeley. Very common. It used to be that robbing undergrads was pointless but now they all have a macbook and an iphone so it's worth it.

https://www.berkeleyside.com/2019/03/19/berkeleys-caffe-stra...

In New York the worst that is likely to happen is getting shouldered out of the way or yelled at. I'm sure the occasional swipe happens but I think it's fairly rare.

I finally figured out what bugs me so much about people walking while looking at their phone. Without phones, when people approach each other in a hallway or on the street, there's a lot of nonvocal communication happening. You don't even have to make eye contact to decide how everyone is going to maneuver around each other. Everyone is generally looking at a point far ahead and walking in a straight line towards it.

Now enter smartphones. This entire communication is simply gone. People on phones only see about a couple meters in front of them. They constantly shift the direction they are walking. It's impossible to predict where they will go. If you're walking towards them, this creates a small spike of anxiety in your lizard brain because it's trying to communicate with them and the lines are down.

For me, it creates excitement at the thought that I can inconspicuously shoulder check some inconsiderate jerk.

Seems like it was only in force for a day, and carried no penalties. Also seems like it was aimed at people who are looking at their smartphones primarily (i.e. playing Pokémon GO).

I don't think they were looking to cure the menace of 歩きスマホ in the stroke of a pen, but rather wanted awareness of the issues of being engaged primarily with your phone rather than your environment.

https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASN71728GN71ULOB004.html#:~:t...

The language chosen for defining 歩きスマホ (“walking smartphone”) uses the word https://jisho.org/word/注視 in its definition, not sure if this is just formal language, or there is some important distinction between 注視 and 見て here.

Nonetheless, here is the draft:

http://www.city.yamato.lg.jp/web/content/000159510.pdf

And if you happen to live in Yamato, and want to track this, here is one of the official pages for tracking the ordinance.

http://www.city.yamato.lg.jp/web/d-seibi/arukisumahopb.html

> not sure if this is just formal language, or there is some important distinction between 注視 and 見て here.

Actually 注視 is as well the word that is used in the law that forbids people from watching the infotainment screen of a car while driving. 注視 means that you are looking at something, while exclusively concentrating your mind on this specific thing, not being aware of your surroundings.

Source:

Non-native Japanese speaker here, having lived in Japan for quite some time, and who took his driving license in Japan.

注視 definition in a Japanese dictionary: https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E6%B3%A8%E8%A6%96/

I find the best thing to do when someone's walking towards you, texting, totally oblivious to your coming towards them, is to play chicken with them. Just keep walking, see how close you can get to them before they notice you. It gets pretty close sometimes, almost had a couple collisions, but so far everyone's looked up in the knick of time, gotten embarrassed and quickly veered away. Gets that adrenaline flowing though.

A bit passive aggressive ?

So it looks like they’re not so unaware of their surroundings after all?

The human mind is incredible, the sound of a car in the distance getting slightly muffled by the body now directly in front of you might cue the subconscious mind that something in the scene has changed triggering you to look up. My guess is all the talk of a sixth sense is just tiny cues from the other senses all getting subconsciously analyzed together.

I get that people dawdle but simply that 6% of people use their phones whilst walking isn’t a problem. It’s an observation.

What are they hoping to change and by how much?

I’ve never been to Yamato, but pedestrian congestion is a problem on some crowded sidewalks in the US. If 6% of users are blocking the sidewalk, it can create slow downs for 94% of everyone else who are trying to get somewhere.

Could we please do it in Sweden too. Sweden are too distracted in traffic for their own good, its like mobile phone zombies sometime, people staring at a piece of glass. This includes myself sometime.

Also cell phones should be banned in traffic because it causes distractions. Attention in traffic is very important.

In my province in Canada there are hefty fines[1] for distracted driving, and yet I still constantly see people texting and driving. It's very frustrating, and as somebody who walks/transits whenever possible terrifying at times. I don't know how to get through to people.

[1] https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/driving-an...

At least where I live, in NYC, all city officials and representatives have the perk of free parking anywhere -- to the extent that they don't even get fined for parking say in a bus stop or next to a fire hydrant or even on the sidewalk or bike lane. With these people in charge of choosing and enforcing the rules of the road, we will never see safety or consideration for non-drivers. I see cops pull over cyclists for harmless stuff all the time, but see drivers pull outrageously reckless stunts on busy roads with no consequence.

I think if people who are in charge of our safety don't know what it's like to navigate as a vulnerable pedestrian/cyclist/etc. on the road, and just see us as obstacles that are slowing them down, I don't think we will see change. (And this includes the average driver, who I believe should have to log some hundred miles or so of cycling before being given a licence to drive near cyclists.) The mayor of Paris cycles to work and has pedestrianised huge parts of the city and built massive numbers of cycle lanes. This is probably not why she was elected but it is probably something we should more seriously consider when appointing people who will have power over our public spaces.

I had to have a very strong discussion with an employee yesterday, as I almost ran him over with a forklift. He was walking back from break, head buried in his phone. I don't care if he spends his break time on his phone, and truth be told I don't even care if he sends the occasional text while working. However, I definitely have a problem with walking around a hazardous warehouse environment and not looking as what you are doing.

For context, I was reversing with a fairly precarious load and saw him walking toward my path. The backup alarm was going, and I even honked twice to get his attention. I finally had to yell loudly to get him to look up and stop.

Thankfully I was paying attention (as I also expect all of our equipment operators to do), but I also expect anyone wandering through active working areas to also be paying attention to their surroundings. These requirements aren't because I want to be a jerk or make employees miserable, it is because I don't want anyone getting hurt. The warehouse I manage isn't a huge facility with 30 forklifts running around, but there is enough activity that I do expect people to be looking around for hazards, and that is a part of the employee handbook and training.

Thankfully it's now 2020 and we've long since learned that putting "be vigilant" in the employee handbook doesn't do anything, just like "don't crash the plane" stickers on an instrument display don't do anything to stop plane crashes.

Even OSHA, the lowest common denominator, requires you to clearly delineate pedestrian travel paths. Physical separation is highly recommended. What doesn't fucking help, and hasn't since the invention of motors in 1900, is "We need to talk about how I almost negligently ran you over".

That is also why I ask all forklift operators to watch where they are going. Not to be flippant, but 'it takes two to tango', and if I had hit him I would have been almost entirely at fault.

However, I don't think I'm getting 19th century in thinking someone walking through an active warehouse should be watching their surroundings. This is also an area where people pick stock off of rolling staircases, it isn't out of the realm of possibility to have a 45lb case of product be dropped off a rack.

I should have mentioned in the original comment, it isn't just the handbook, we stress during training that this is a potentially hazardous area, and that you need to be aware of your surroundings. My goal isn't to avoid insurance/workman's comp claims; my goal is for everyone to leave at day's end safely & without injury. I realize there is no such thing as legislating safety, which is why we immediately point out any unsafe behaviors. There are unfortunately just some workplaces that by their very nature are hazardous. I spend ~40% of my time in an office environment, and the hazards there are tripping or paper cuts. However, for the warehouse I manage, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect employees to be aware of their surroundings. This is a workplace where there is moving equipment, blind corners, people on ladders, and the possibility of falling objects. The bare minimum in this situation is to look where you are going.

We have pedestrian travel paths, and he wasn't even close to one. He was so engrossed in whatever he was watching on his phone that he had wandered 60' away from where he even should have been to get back to his station. He was paying so little attention he was actively walking away from his destination.

Sweden made it an offence to use a mobile while driving and then rescinded it when they discovered that the law made no difference to the accident rate.

These things require enforcement. I rarely see or even hear of people getting tickets for using phones while driving here but, as a cyclist/motorcyclist that has to be very aware of traffic, I am constantly seeing people texting while driving. I also see most cops texting/playing candy crush in their cars too, which might explain the lack of enforcement.

pretty difficult to know how high the compliance actually was. One of the first articles I could find was that the police found it difficult to apply.

So likely less of an issue of it not being dangerous but rather hard to enforce.

My impression was that analysis of the accident statistics failed to reveal any effect. Of course that doesn't mean that there wasn't one but it does suggest that it was too small to be useful.

What a weird idea. What if you're using it for navigation? What if I want to pause the audiobook I'm listening to? I have to stop and remove myself from the flow of traffic? (not even possible sometimes)

I think probably minimal use like that would not be an issue, and there is no penalty at the moment. It'd be nice if they would link to the actual draft ordinance, so I could read it.

Added: Yeah, seems like you would have no problem. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23731864

Japan needs to focus on real problems such as banning smoking everywhere instead of use of phones.

Tokyo already passed and is enforcing an ordinance that banks smoking in all restaurants, cafes and bars. It’s great! There are some straggler restaurants not complying with it though, having just been in place since April.

They are https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/04/01/national/japan-...

I really don’t understand how you can walk around on your phone with zero situational awareness. Surely if you did it enough you’d have enough practice to develop it? When I was young I used to walk around reading books; I can’t see a phone being significantly harder than that to look past…

Am I the only one that doesn't have a problem walking and chewing bubble gum?

On a planet with 7 billion people? Probably not.

What will be more effective in the end is if walking (also: eating, sitting at a table, etc.) while immersed in a phone finally becomes uncool with young people. So far it doesn't seem to happen (unfortunately).

If you're proposing a law, and a study says that 12% of people would violate this law, it's a major indication that this is a bad law.

Is it?

Studies seem to indicate that around that many people admitted to or have drove drunk in America for example. Does that mean drinking and driving laws are bad?

Drunk driving had to be banned because it's just too dangerous. It had to be eradicated at all costs even despite many people violating this law. On the other hand there's no indication that texting while walking is more dangerous than walking while drunk. Walking is a low-risk activity which doesn't require a license and people routinely do it while being under an influence.

I mean sure, but that wasn't your original argument. Your original argument was that if it affects 12% of people, then it's a bad law. We've now demonstrated that reducing things down like that doesn't work.

There's an argument to be made that texting while walking can be dangerous because if you're sharing a small space with cyclists or others then you're potentially leaving yourself open to colliding with them. And ultimately the cost to fix this problem is low and unobtrusive (ie just step aside).

Their original argument was it's a MAJOR INDICATION of a bad law. Which is to say that if you're law is going to be broken by double-digit percentages of the population, there needs to be a solid argument as to WHY. A real counter-example would need to be a law that is widely broken, has no demonstrable benefit, and is still somehow a good law. Which is tautologically impossible, criminalizing people for no benefit is inherently bad lawmaking.

The presumption is that it's a bad law, because laws that affect a large percentage of the population are often unenforceable.

By this logic murder shouldn't be illegal because most people don't murder anyway?

My point was that this law makes 12% of pedestrians illegal, which is too high, not that nobody does this.

We did this sort of ban in the 80's but with the Walkman: https://patch.com/new-jersey/woodbridge/walkmans-banned-wood...

Eventually more people will be moving out of cities after enough of them enforce one too many rules to appease some people. Obviously, not everyone will, but it rules like this seem counter to what the global system wants, which is to cram people into cities.

This is Japan, not the US. People in Japan don't balk at every regulation and are generally pretty accepting of putting rules in place in public spaces if it improves quality of public life, which is true for people in most cities on the globe to be honest.

It will be as effective as JR recommending people not to use phones next to elderly seats. Entirely ignored.

I think the problem will be lessened slightly as wearables get better.

Will this be effective without some form of punishment as a deterent?

There are quite a few rules and local laws in Japan that don’t carry any punishment or, indeed, aren’t even enforced but are still followed. Making it law in this case is more of a nudge than anything else. Honestly, it’s much more scary here to be stared down by a group old people than the police.

Just curious, what happens when the old people come after you? Is it because they could be yakuza?

It’s just extremely uncomfortable. I try to participate in the neighborhood events as well so it’s better to just fall in line (wherever the line is, not really clear either). Just a recent example, I forgot to wear a mask last week when I went to the supermarket and kept getting stares by other shoppers. That wouldn’t be an issue even a couple of months ago.

I’m guilty of it now, too, though. If anyone is smoking on the road while walking or biking, I lock eyes with them and they usually stop or at least turn away.

In Japan, it'll probably still be somewhat effective without explicitly stating a punishment.

how does ban without penalty even work? isn't it called recommendation in English?

More bans like this may well be a big driving force in the adoption and more rapid progression of AR tech

For smartphones!? I can only imagine that being more hazardous.

Do you notice how we negotiate paths when we are walking? body language, with particular emphasis on the position of the head and eyes. Try this experiment: as you walk towards someone without a clear path to their left or right - walk with intent to go slightly one side with your eyes/head slightly to the other, usually your intent comes across far more ambiguous and requires more negotiation than usual... now imagine people are not looking where they are going (literally), while appearing to be looking where they are going. And I don't buy that AR magically solves concentration by keeping your field of view.

At least with those zombies staring down it's clear they are distracted so you can ignore their body language.

Smart glasses obviously.

I'm sure I'm showing my age when I say that I really don't like walking in cities (or anywhere really) with ear buds/headphones in. It's too much isolation from the environment and I'm just not comfortable with it. I imagine that's a minority option though and many will claim that the isolation really isn't a problem with the right earpieces. But I can only speak to how I personally feel.

Transparency mode works well on Airpods pro but I never walk around busy streets with both earbuds in. I strongly recommend only using one and listening to audio books or podcasts

I've heard that about the Airpod Pros.

I guess part of it is that I don't really feel a need to always be listening to some kind of soundtrack. I actually do listen to podcasts when I drive, especially on the highway. But I don't even routinely have music on in my house and don't really like working with music in the background.

Ugh, I hate that, those people with contonuous soundtracks. They don't seem to realize it's loud, makes them speak louder still and is a huge hit to their ability to pay attention.

I’m 35 and have mostly abandoned the idea of smartphones being better than a laptop. I travel with it as little as possible, and still study maps before I travel and carry papers with me.

I hate tech in the world, and meet younger people who feel similar. Personally I love the city, but if tech people take over I can be swayed to move to a fruit farm and never leave.

Good. I'm tired of phone zombies walking literally INTO me. There at least needs to be some clearly defined etiquette.

"keep right" only works in right-hand drive countries, nor is it consistently applied (shopping center escalators, etc.) except for Germany, lol

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