A new report has looked at how many drivers and pedestrians are distracted by Pokémon Go, using social media and news reports.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, involved researchers obtaining tweets over a 10-day period that contained the words ‘Pokémon’ and ‘driving’, ‘drives’, ‘drive’ or ‘car’. They also searched the internet for stories of drivers crashing while using Pokémon Go.
Researchers found that 18 per cent of the tweets indicated a person was playing while also driving a car. They also found that approximately one third of the texts indicated that a driver, passenger or pedestrian was distracted by the game.
During the 10-day period that were 14 unique crashes – including one player who drove his car into a tree – attributed to Pokémon Go, reported in the news.
Click here to view a summary of the report.
