Mobile phones and driving do not mix. And we are not talking about talking on the phone while driving. That’s dangerous enough of course. But with the advent of the iphone came the facility [some would say menace] of taking selfies. And this trend to take selfies has already resulted in hundreds of deaths and thousands of accidents with serious consequences for those besotted by the new technology.
And now comes another distraction for the daring – the game called Pokemon Go.
Released barely a month, it has already caught the attention of the young and the old and there are people who can be seen seriously and anxiously hunting for the elusive Pokemon.
But whereas the game was essentially designed, at one level, to persuade people to walk and keep fit, that aim is hardly being served by the way people are going about hunting for the ‘creature’. They are jumping hedges, mucking about in people’s gardens, entering private properties, even homes, whether it is daylight or twilight, scaring peace-loving citizens and making a spectacle of themselves.
And hold your breath. Many addicts of the game are even driving around town to locate the elusive Pokemon. Or going about on foot oblivious of the traffic on highways with one of those wayward and callous drivers. The phenomenon is universal and not confined to Bahrain. Thus, only last week a woman in Melbourne, Australia, died after being dragged along the road for 70 metres as she played Pokemon.
A week earlier, in Baltimore, US, three policemen escaped death miraculously when a Pokemon-playing driver smashed into their patrol car. The same week, in a posh Bombay area a man driving a Mercedes while playing Pokemon hit an autorickshaw landing his limo in a garage. He now plans to create awareness and educate people to be careful while playing the game.
The message is clear. Play Pokemon Go if you have to but play it on foot. If you try to hunt for it while driving around aimlessly with hardly time to take your eyes off the screen of your iphone then you run a huge risk to your life and limbs and those of other drivers and pedestrians.
Happy driving means let Pokemon remain out of sight.