Interesting, but I'd like to see a broader study. Note that this was the New York City DOT, not the state DOT. The study does reference some national figures, but otherwise mostly focuses on NYC itself.
Given the volume of people walking around in NYC at most hours of the day, I'd expect a sort of "herd immunity" to come into play: sure, you might be on your phone, but you're surrounded by 15 other people while crossing the street, and a car is going to be hard pressed to not see all of you. At least one of those people is likely paying attention, at any rate.
Also I was a little confused by their conclusion, given this statistic in the linked report, under "Pedestrian Self-Reports of Distraction":
"Using emergency room data from 1,075 pedestrian injuries (2008–2011), researchers at Bellevue Hospital found that 7.7% of admitted pedestrians were using an electronic device at the time of the crash."
How is 7.7% not "significant"? I'm sure those 83 people would rather not have been in the emergency room, and maybe have changed their behavior for the better. And that's just injuries; obviously dead pedestrians can't self-report what they were up to in the moments leading up to their death. Also consider that 7.7% is a lower bound. While it's unlikely that someone would lie to say they were using a device when they weren't, it's likely that there are quite a few people who were actually using a device during the incident but didn't want to admit it out of embarrassment or fear of fault or blame being assigned to them (legally, even).
Given the volume of people walking around in NYC at most hours of the day, I'd expect a sort of "herd immunity" to come into play: sure, you might be on your phone, but you're surrounded by 15 other people while crossing the street, and a car is going to be hard pressed to not see all of you. At least one of those people is likely paying attention, at any rate.
Also I was a little confused by their conclusion, given this statistic in the linked report, under "Pedestrian Self-Reports of Distraction":
"Using emergency room data from 1,075 pedestrian injuries (2008–2011), researchers at Bellevue Hospital found that 7.7% of admitted pedestrians were using an electronic device at the time of the crash."
How is 7.7% not "significant"? I'm sure those 83 people would rather not have been in the emergency room, and maybe have changed their behavior for the better. And that's just injuries; obviously dead pedestrians can't self-report what they were up to in the moments leading up to their death. Also consider that 7.7% is a lower bound. While it's unlikely that someone would lie to say they were using a device when they weren't, it's likely that there are quite a few people who were actually using a device during the incident but didn't want to admit it out of embarrassment or fear of fault or blame being assigned to them (legally, even).
I just don't find this study all that compelling.