The Rhythm is Gonna Get Ya

For those of you reading this on your mobile device while walking and listening to music, turn off that music right now. According to researchers from the University of Maryland, “serious injuries to pedestrians listening to headphones have more than tripled in six years,” and that number will only go up as we get older and/or the music playing through those headphones gets louder.

70 percent of headphone-wearing pedestrians in their study of 116 cases ended in death. (No one reported whether the iPod or Zune was OK.) And this was despite over half of the accidents involving trains, which, c’mon, kind of give away where they’re coming from with tracks.

At least a third of the 116 accidents involving cars and trains tried to alert pedestrians with their horns, but this blended in seamlessly with listeners’ techno and dubstep mixes. The study did not account for people of superior musical taste who aimed for the pedestrians and then sounded their horn in a victorious yawp.

Bonus: The article in the link comes from an online section of the USA Today titled, “DriveOn.”