(Image Credit: ABC News) 
 
 Avid texters beware: Fort Lee, N.J. police said they will begin issuing $85 jaywalking tickets to pedestrians who are caught texting while walking. 
 
 "It's a big distraction. Pedestrians aren't watching where they are going and they are not aware," said Thomas Ripoli, chief of the Fort Lee Police Department. 
 
 Ripoli said the borough, which is home to approximately 35,000 residents, has suffered three fatal pedestrian-involved accidents this year. He hopes his crackdown on people who display dangerous behavior while walking will make his town safer, but not everyone is on board with the idea of issuing $85 tickets. 
 
 "When I walk I still look around. I'm not like constantly looking down the whole time," said resident Sue Choe. 
 
 Another woman complained about the tickets were "a lot of money." 
 
 Officers handed out pamphlets during a short grace period in March before they began aggressively going after "dangerous walkers." 
 
 More than 117 tickets have been issued, according to the New Jersey Record. 
 
 Two professors at Stony Brook University in New York conducted a study on walking and texting. They found texters are 60 percent more likely to veer off line than non-texters. 
 
 "We want to raise awareness that a real disruption occurs because of texting," Eric Lamberg, co-author of the study, told Long Island Business News. "Texting disrupts your ability much more than does talking." ||||| Measure could lead to fines of up to $50 or 15 days’ imprisonment as state lawmaker warns of the dangers of ‘distracted walking’ 
 
 Jared Schumacher is one of hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans who routinely use electronic devices to text, listen to music or do other tasks as they walk outdoors. 
 
 If a “distracted walking” measure recently proposed by a state assemblywoman becomes law, the Trenton man and others like him could face fines or even jail time. 
 
 “I admit that I’m usually listening to music, talking on my phone or texting while I’m walking around,” Schumacher, 20, said while responding to a text as he walked along a street in the state capital last weekend. 
 
 “I’ve never hurt myself, but I’ve seen people walk into poles or trip over a big crack in the sidewalk.” 
 
 Experts say distracted walking is a growing problem, as people of all ages become more dependent on electronic devices for personal and professional matters. They also note pedestrian deaths have been rising in recent years. In 2005, 11% of all US fatalities involved pedestrians, but that number rose to 15% in 2014. 
 
 The rise in deaths coincides with states introducing bills that target pedestrians and/or bicyclists. For instance, a bill pending in Hawaii would fine someone $250 if he or she were to cross the street while operating an electronic device. Similar bills have failed in states including Arkansas, Illinois, Nevada and New York. 
 
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 “Thus far, no states have enacted a law specifically targeting distracted bicyclists or pedestrians,” said Douglas Shinkle, transportation program director for the National Conference of State Legislatures. But he added that “a few states continue to introduce legislation every year”. 
 
 The measure recently introduced by New Jersey assemblywoman Pamela Lampitt would ban walking while texting and bar pedestrians on public roads from using electronic communication devices unless they are hands-free. 
 
 Violators would face fines of up to $50, 15 days imprisonment or both, which is the same penalty as jaywalking. 
 
 Half of the fine would be allocated to safety education about the dangers of walking and texting, said Lampitt, a Democrat. 
 
 Some see the proposal as an unnecessary government overreach, while others say they understand Lampitt’s reasoning. But most agree that people need to be made aware of the issue. 
 
 “Distracted pedestrians, like distracted drivers, present a potential danger to themselves and drivers on the road,” Lampitt said. “An individual crossing the road distracted by their smartphone presents just as much danger to motorists as someone jaywalking and should be held, at minimum, to the same penalty.” 
 
 The main question raised about the measure, though, is whether it can be enforced consistently by police officers who usually have more pressing matters to deal with. Schumacher is among those who feel that rather than imposing a new law, the state should focus on distracted-walking education. 
 
 Lampitt said the measure was needed to dissuade and penalize “risky behavior”. She cited a National Safety Council report that showed distracted walking incidents involving cellphones accounted for an estimated 11,101 injuries from 2000 to 2011. 
 
 The study found a majority of those injured were female and most were 40 or younger. Talking on the phone was the most prevalent activity at the time of injury, while texting accounted for 12%. Nearly 80% of the injuries occurred as the result of a fall, while 9% occurred from the pedestrian striking a motionless object. 
 
 The most common injury types included dislocations or fractures, sprains or strains and concussions or contusions. 
 
 The proposed New Jersey measure has not yet been given a scheduled hearing. ||||| Last month the Highway Loss Data Institute, a research organization funded by the auto insurance industry, put out a study claiming that automotive texting bans don't work. Thirty states and the District of Columbia prohibit texting while driving, and eight of them, plus D.C., also require hands-free devices for use with cell phones. But in four states that the HLDI examined—California, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Washington—passage of texting bans did not seem to reduce the rate of accidents. 
 
 In Slate, James Ledbetter took issue with the study. He pointed out that researchers hadn't taken into account the huge rise in texting; even if the texting bans didn't reduce accidents, they may well be keeping accident rates steady, because even more people would be fiddling with their phones if we didn't have these laws. I don't quite buy Ledbetter's thesis, because HLDI's study also showed that accident patterns in states with texting bans looked similar to those of nearby states that hadn't banned texting. (If Ledbetter were right, we'd have seen an increase in crashes in states without bans.) But even if you believe the laws are working now, they can't hold off the driving texters forever. More people buy smartphones every year, and carmakers keep adding new and better ways for us to connect those devices to our cars. 
 
 Texting bans are based on what would seem to be a common-sensical idea about the dangers of modern technology and cars—that tech and driving don't mix. Drivers need to focus on the road, and Internet-enabled cell phones, music players, and GPS devices are causing us to lose focus. Until now, society has decided that the way to fix the problem is to legislate concentration—to force us to ditch our devices as a means to keep our eyes, our ears, and our fingers fixed to the road. But what if that's the wrong approach? If we want to make our cars safer, perhaps we shouldn't discourage tech from entering the cabin. Instead, we should embrace it. 
 
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 On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Google is building a car that can drive itself. The search company's small fleet of self-driving cars—guided by roof-mounted sensors and a battalion of cloud-connected servers—has driven more than 140,000 miles with minimal human intervention. The cars can obey traffic signs, merge on to the freeway, and avoid pedestrians and bicyclists. I was stunned by the news; two years ago, I interviewed several auto-safety engineers about the potential for self-driving cars, and they all told me that the technology was decades away. Google told the Times that its cars are still an experiment, and the company hasn't decided to turn the tech into a commercial product. The tech still has kinks—Google's cars don't know how to obey traffic cops' hand signals, for instance. Still, self-driving automobiles appear to be on the way to revolutionizing modern transportation. Google's technology could make cars safer, more efficient, and a lot more pleasant. 
 
 Indeed, it's fascinating to think about how automated driving will change how we spend our time in the car. Americans squander nearly an hour each workday commuting. That's exactly why legislating concentration seems like a futile approach. Working from the road has become a hallmark of the American economy—we're all being pressed to be more productive, and the many hours each week we're trapped in our cars seem like the perfect time to get something done. Many industries (like freight companies and plumbing outfits) require workers to be tied in to the central office using onboard computers, and even office workers feel the push to stay connected while on the road. What's more, research suggests that while both teenagers and adults (PDF) know the dangers of texting while driving, we're all overconfident about our own abilities to multitask on the road—you think it's dangerous for me to look at my phone while I'm driving, but you're pretty sure you can handle it. (And texting laws are so spottily enforced that you're pretty sure that you can get away with it, too.) 
 
 Rather than trying to eliminate distraction, the Google approach aims to do something that could prove much simpler and more effective: make distraction less dangerous. The problem with texting while driving is that we're not cognitively equipped to do both tasks at the same time. But why should driving be so cognitively onerous in the first place? We already rely on computers to handle a lot of driving hassles—your cell phone can map out your route before you leave, it can find nearby gas stations, it can give you turn-by-turn directions, it can show you which roads are jammed, and it can even intelligently select some tunes you might like to hear along the way. Your car is also no tech slouch; modern vehicles use software to manage much of the driving experience, including the brakes and the steering. Given how steadily computers have invaded every part of the driving experience, it doesn't seem like a big leap for them to take over the wheel. That would free us up to handle much more intrinsically human tasks, like looking up movie show times. Perhaps this explains Google's motivation for looking into robotic cars: If you're not driving, you'll have much more time to surf the Web. 
 
 Of course, robot cars aren't an immediate solution to the problem of distracted driving. Over the next few years, long before production-ready vehicles can drive themselves, we'll continue to see upticks in the use of dangerous gadgets behind the wheel. But robotic autos could be closer than you think. Many automakers are already selling cars that take over the wheel in specific circumstances. Autonomous cruise control systems found in some luxury cars can automatically maintain a safe following distance, and some systems alert you when you're about to drift out of a lane or hit the car in front of you. There are also several cars that can automatically steer you into a parallel parking spot. 
 
 These technologies point to the future of driving. Today, it's tempting to reach for your phone when you're stuck in traffic—but by all means, don't do it. But just wait a little while longer. Some day soon, texting will be pretty much the only interesting thing to do on your way to work. 
 
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– Take your fingers off your cell phone, and nobody gets hurt. That could be a warning from one New Jersey town's cops, who are handing out $85 jaywalking tickets to pedestrians who text while they walk—117 so far. "It’s a big distraction. Pedestrians aren’t watching where they are going, and they are not aware," said the chief of the Fort Lee police department. Three pedestrians have been killed this year in car accidents, and investigators hope the crackdown will help public safety. Texters, considered "dangerous walkers" by the police department, were warned about the fines with brochures in March, notes ABC News. Two professors at a New York university found that texters are 60% more likely to veer cluelessly off their route than non-texters, increasing the likelihood that they'll stray into danger. Texters, not surprisingly, aren't LOL-ing about the change. “When I walk I still look around. I’m not, like, constantly looking down the whole time,” sniffed one resident.