A colleague of mine harbours a slightly dark and mildly violent fantasy: He would like to walk down the sidewalk and slap the cellphone out of the hands of every single person who almost walks into him because they are looking down texting while they walk.
He does an excellent job of miming this; you can almost see it happen as he lunges forward slapping the air and offering the offender a deadpan stare as the imaginary phone flies to the pavement and smashes to pieces, or at the very least is cracked badly enough that texting becomes impossible without slicing the skin off your thumbs like a tiny glass kitchen mandoline.
I have (perhaps predictably) adopted this fantasy as my own and embellished it only slightly. Sometimes the phone is smacked down to the sidewalk. Other times I attack from below, sending the phone into the air, cartwheeling in a perfect arc over the person's head and out of reach behind them. Then, action-movie style, I keep walking without looking back.
For now, this remains a fantasy, but I sometimes actually do this just for fun: As the oblivious texting person approaches, I walk directly at them to see how long it takes them to notice they're on a collision course. If they don't notice I stop in front of them. Some will actually walk into me, some will notice me at the last moment, stop abruptly and look up in a state of utter confusion. And others will move around me smoothly, the way a stream glides around a water-worn rock.
But texting while walking isn't just a minor annoyance, it's dangerous.
This week while I was driving (yes, a car – sorry) down Commercial Drive, a woman stepped off the curb in front of me and made it halfway across the street before raising her head to realize she was in the middle of four lanes of traffic whizzing by. I do not believe that this was some display of her trust in the ability of the drivers on the road. We know how selfish and distracted drivers can be.
No, she just didn't look.
It seems inevitable that one day oblivious textestrian will meet oblivious texting driver and the result will be fatal.
This week's display was, of course, not the first time I've seen it – it's been around as long as texting has. But it feels to me like it's getting worse. I see more people doing it – ear buds rendering them deaf, and eyes on the screen in their hands paying exactly zero attention to what's going on around them.
What's beyond belief is when cyclists get in on the action. Three times over the past couple of weeks on my stroll to work down the Adanac bike route, I have witnessed at least three texting cyclists – helmetless heads bowed down, and both hands on the phone, which, of course, means no hands on the bike.
Stunning when you think about all the unpredictable things that can happen on the roads and how quickly you may have to react to something.
Oh, and some skateboarders do it, too.
I'm in no way letting drivers off the hook here. We know that despite public awareness campaigns and ticket blitzes, drivers are still texting, and they have the capacity to do the most damage.
But back to pedestrians – and a confession: I, too, am a textestrian. On the days when I walk to work, I send and read e-mail, preview the day's news offerings and occasionally do it while listening to the radio.
But I have a couple of rules: I don't do it on busy sidewalks, and when I'm approaching a major intersection, I put the phone down, take the ear buds out and pay attention to what's going on around me.
I mean, you never know when you might encounter a texting cyclist or skateboarder.
Stephen Quinn is the host of the On the Coast on CBC Radio One, 88.1 FM and 690 AM in Vancouver.