Short answer: “eyes glued to iPhone”, however distractions of any kind existed before the smartphone from people blasting loud music with headphones via a walkman, putting the radio at max volume, having either a book or newspaper obstructing one’s view. You get the point, I once heard an incident involving a woman almost getting ran over by a street car in Turkey all because she’s glued to the phone screen whilst walking.
Out of curiosity I searched around for the amount of people killed by buses over time, the classic not-paying-attention death, and it seems like the number has been fairly stable since 2000.
My hypothesis was that if people were getting less good at paying attention that number should rise. One factor I couldn’t control for is people becoming more aware of being hit by a bus and being more alert in that specific situation. That would also explain the stability of the number as the population has risen quite a bit since 2000 but the bus fatality rate has remained the same, which might imply the bus death per 100,000 would actually be going down. I also didn’t look at the rate of injury, so safety technology could be shifting more fatalities to non-fatal injuries.
Either way the bus data does not suggest that people are paying more or less attention than they always have. Further research is required as the results were inconclusive.
Interesting, but yes I.'d think (hope) each bus death. or injury changes the driver and bus operating organisation, and municipality in some way. Even if it was the pedestrians ‘fault’, the bus can probably do things to reduce the risk.
This research should ideally start with a random/representative sample of people exposed to a measurable level of bus death risk.