About 3 years ago, the crossing of the rail track at the bottom of the lane we then lived near was the scene of a fatal accident. The young man concerned apparently didn't notice the train that hit him. He was wearing headphones. It is thought the two facts are connected. This would seem more likely in view of this research:
Researchers reviewed 116 accident cases from 2004 to 2011 in which injured pedestrians were documented to be using headphones. Seventy percent of the 116 accidents resulted in death to the pedestrian. More than two-thirds of victims were male (68 percent) and under the age of 30 (67 percent). More than half of the moving vehicles involved in the accidents were trains (55 percent), and nearly a third (29 percent) of the vehicles reported sounding some type of warning horn prior to the crash. The increased incidence of accidents over the years closely corresponds to documented rising popularity of auditory technologies with headphones.
The piece of work I think that needs doing now, on this theme, is correlating use of headphones with muggings and (attempted) sexual assaults. I would hypothesise that headphone users are less vigilant than they might otherwise be and so don't take elementary precautions or even notice potentially dangerous situations developing.
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