Distracted While Walking Fatality Report

One of the most extreme cases came when 19-year-old Ryan Robbins died in February 2011 after a night out in Melbourne, Australia as he accidentally walked over a short railing in a parking lot and plunged to his death while texting his friend.

The federal government is not the only one trying to stop the rise in injuries as a new app called Walk and Text that turns smart phones ‘see through’ and the screen shows a camera with a transparent keyboard.

That way true text addicts can continue to type messages while seeing if there is an errant pothole a few feet in front of them.

• Barely 24 hours after that accident, there was another similar tragedy. On the morning of Thursday, January 16, 2020, 67-year-old Xiang Ji was killed by a piece of aluminum-covered plywood that flew off a building in Flushing, Queens. She was walking under a building on Main Street with various plywood advertisements attached to it, when one collapsed onto her. Stunningly, the building under which she was texting while walking already had a Stop Work Order for 18 open violations. City Councilman Peter Koo called for the city to shut down the building until scaffolding is in place and the safety of the site can be assured, even though it is, sadly, too late for Ms. Ji.