When Pokémon GO was launched in Singapore last month, we were greeted with an alleged car accident that was caused by the game on the second day.
We didn’t know exactly how many accidents were caused by the game, since no one in their right mind would tell their insurance agents or the police that they were playing Pokémon GO when an accident occurred.
But a study has shown that in a ten-day period, there could be 113,993 accidents that involved distracted pedestrians and drivers.
And this isn’t just a hearsay study by some Pokémon GO hater—the study is published in a journal, JAMA.
Dr John Ayers from San Diego University did a study on 4,000 messages (as a sample number) on Twitter (in the US, there’re many Twitter users) and news report. He found that there was a total of 113,993 incidents involving distracted drivers and pedestrians. This included at least 14 crashes over that short period.
In addition to this, the number might be larger—Dr Ayers admitted that “the number is likely even larger because of the cases that aren’t reported on by Twitter users.”
Now, note that this study was conducted only among the US population—should we add all the countries that have Pokémon GO launched in, the number might be astounding.
A few days ago, a new feature was included in the game, in which players might be motivated to walk more so as to get more candies to power up their Pokémon.
I guess there should now be a new tagline for drivers: “If you Pokémon GO, don’t drive.”
Featured Image: Dmitry Kalinovsky / Shutterstock.com
This article was first published on goodyfeed.com
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