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And this is a widespread view?

A The police are seeing the exact same thing too: People are buried in their phones, they’re bumping into things and they’re not aware of their surroundings. Since the story’s gone out, I got an email from one man telling me he just had to push a lady out of the way of a C-Train because she had music on and wasn’t paying attention. In Calgary we’ve had 548 pedestrian collisions in 2013, and it’s difficult to tell from the data whose fault it is, but we had one collision where a person had a headset on and was hit by a cement truck. You know, you can’t hear and you can’t see your surroundings — there’s just this expectation that nothing’s going to happen.

What do you propose to do?

A This is no Big Brother thing and the last thing I want to do is put in a million rules: I’m focused on people crossing the streets and being defensive. We need an education and awareness program, and maybe a ticketing system for crossing a crosswalk without paying attention. It’s interesting to note that we teach our children to look both ways, but now that we’re adults we think, “I’m going to stick my head into my electronics and walk across the street.” We’re going to flesh the whole issue out over the next few months.

In essence, you are proposing to re-educate the adult population as to the wisdom of “look both ways”?

A Yes, mobile devices have changed our habits. When I’ve started doing the research on this, I’ve been finding this is in Calgary, this is in Taiwan, they’re handing out leaflets in Toronto, this is everywhere, because it’s a new culture, right? We can’t stop it anywhere else, and I don’t even want to try. I just want to focus on pedestrian traffic when they’re crossing.