Heads Up, Phones Down: A Pedestrian Safety Intervention on Distracted Crosswalk Behavior

Cell phone use has been implicated in driver distraction and motor vehicle crashes, and more recently has been associated with distracted pedestrians. There are limited data on interventions aimed at this important public health issue. We hypothesized that the use of a visual intervention near street crossings would decrease the frequency of distracted behaviors of pedestrians. We performed a prospective observational cohort study examining painted sidewalk stencils reading, “Heads Up, Phones Down” as an intervention to decrease cell phone distractions amongst pedestrians. These stenciled messages were placed at a children’s hospital, middle school, and high school in Los Angeles County. Anonymous observations of pedestrian distractions (texting, talking on a phone, headphone use, and other) were conducted before, 1 week after, and 4 months after the intervention. Distractions were compared before and after intervention using Chi square tests. A total of 11,533 pedestrians were observed, with 71% children and 29% adults. Total distractions decreased from 23% pre-intervention to 17% 1 week after stencil placement (p < 0.01), but this was not sustained at 4 months (23%, p = 0.4). A sustained decrease was observed only for texting at 4 months post-intervention (8.5% vs. 6.8%, p < 0.01). A simple visual intervention reduced distracted cell phone usage in pedestrians crossing the street, but this was most effective early after the intervention. Future studies are warranted to determine how to sustain this effect over time and how to minimize other types of distractions.