The Japan Times65%
Distracted walkers in Japan are a real safety risk. My mother knows firsthand. 9%
By Alex K.t. Martin0%
6/21/2026, 3:40:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 20 faulty reasoning types, including Representativeness Heuristic, Negativity Bias, and Appeal to Authority, with Unattributed Quote as the most egregious example at 17.8% saturation with 82 hits. Analysis detected 682 faulty-reasoning hits from 460 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 25.2% and a BS Rank of 9% (19,445 of 21,175 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 91.80% of the article peer group.
At around 8:45 a.m. on Friday, June 5, my mother was knocked over by a man staring at his smartphone as he exited the ticket gates of the Seibu Ikebukuro Line at Ikebukuro, one of the busiest train stations in Tokyo.
My mother, 78, has a bad left knee and uses a cane whenever she goes out.
She struck the right side of her face on the ground.
By the time I arrived about 15 minutes later — we had planned to meet on the platform before boarding an express train — she was sitting in a Seibu staff room, assisted by station employees.
Her right forehead was swollen and would soon force her right eye shut.
A three-centimeter laceration beneath her eye was bleeding heavily.
“I told him to watch out and raised my hand to keep my distance, but it was too late,” she told me.
The incident is hardly unique.
In Tokyo and other major Japanese cities, aruki-sumaho — walking while using a smartphone — has become a persistent safety concern as commuters navigate crowded stations and sidewalks while focused on their devices.
Despite years of awareness campaigns by rail operators and mobile phone carriers, the behavior remains widespread.
Police officers and ambulance crews arrived shortly afterward.
The man involved in the collision remained at the station, waiting in an adjacent room.
My mother said that he should be allowed to leave and continue on his way.
Her priority was receiving prompt medical treatment for the bleeding.
We boarded the ambulance and headed to a hospital, where she underwent a CT scan and received stitches for the cut.
Fortunately, there were no broken bones and no signs of a brain hemorrhage.
Still, it was the realization of a long-held fear: being injured by a distracted pedestrian absorbed in a smartphone screen.
According to the Tokyo Fire Department, 171 people were taken to hospital by ambulance between 2021 and 2025 after accidents involving people looking at or operating smartphones while walking or cycling.
Forty-three such cases were recorded in 2025 alone.
Falls were the most common cause of injury, accounting for 71 cases, or more than 40% of the total.
Another 47 people were injured falling from elevated locations, while 46 were hurt in collisions with other people or objects.
Roughly 70% of ambulance transports occurred in places such as sidewalks and train stations.
These figures, however, do not include people injured by distracted smartphone users, such as my mother, said an official at the community safety section in the Tokyo Fire Department’s disaster prevention and public safety division, suggesting the true number of smartphone-related accidents may be higher.
“A lot of the cases occur...
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