Almost had a head-on collision this week.
And when I say head-on, I mean head-on, bonk, noggin to noggin, right there in the middle of the sidewalk on Kings Road.
Tragedy was averted only because the other guy looked up from his phone and lurched left at the last second, averting a violent crash that could have cost me my life or, worse, my BlackBerry, on which I was fixated as though it were naked.
I later explained to my wife that this near-miss could have been avoided had I been carrying an iPhone, for which you can buy an app called Type n Walk.
It displays what's in front of you as you meander down the sidewalk/street/runway, allowing you to keep your eyes on the screen as iGod intended.
My wife, however, suggested an alternative that involved putting the damn thing down before it was stored someplace where the signal strength might be compromised.
This would seem to put her in the camp of the Illinois state legislator who tried, unsuccessfully, to bar pedestrians from using cell phones while crossing the street.
He is not alone. As more and more jurisdictions ban the use of handheld devices while driving (B.C. did so in 2010) other politicians have been calling for laws against using them while on foot, too.
In New York, where a teenage girl took a sewage bath after texting her way into an open manhole, state senator Carl Kruger has spent five years waging a Quixotic campaign to ban the use of electronic devices while crossing the street. That's somewhat similar to the campaign of the Arkansas senator who wants to ban wearing headphones in both ears while on or next to a street.
The college town of Rexburg, Idaho, has already taken the first step, as it were, writing $50 tickets to pedestrians caught texting while crossing the road.
Texting and walking is particularly problematic. Why? Because we're bashing into each other while not looking, that's why. We look like a bunch of head-down monkeys thumb-drumming our bongos as we blindly march into walls, traffic and gangsters' girlfriends. (And gosh, if you haven't seen it yet, look up "Woman Falls In Mall Fountain While Texting" on YouTube.)
The American College of Emergency Physicians issued a warning about the dangers a couple of years ago: "People are texting and they trip and fall on their faces - usually people in their 20s," it quoted an Illinois doctor as saying. "We see a lot of face, chin, mouth [and] eye injuries from falls."
This phenomenon is not new (an Ohio State University study found 1,000 pedestrians ended up in emergency rooms after being hurt while talking or texting in 2008) but it is growing.
Texting-related tumbles have become so common that a U.S. medical bracelet company recently began marketing the Thumband - it's like a silicone wrist band, but for your thumb - imprinted with messages like TXTING KILLS and I'M SAFE. In England, London lamp posts were wrapped in thick padding as a publicity stunt to promote "safe texting" a couple of years ago. In Finland, where pedestrians had the nasty habit of being squashed by tram cars at crosswalks, authorities have tried embedding traffic signals in the street itself, where they might be seen by eyes fixed on phones.
Don't hear as much about texting-related pedestrians collisions in Canada, perhaps because wearing tuques 10 months of the year leaves us less susceptible to the worst effects of head-to-head bonking. Or maybe we're already so concussed from playing without a helmet that we don't see a problem.
Still, the same rule applies in life as on the ice: keep your head up if you don't want it taken off.
And just be glad that we have yet to see much evidence of the latest disorder, "sleep texting" which has prompted an Australian sleep expert to advise patients to leave their phones outside their bedrooms lest they type messages while snoring.
