Pokémon GO — A New Cause of Motor-Vehicle and Pedestrian Accidents

Pokémon GO, the electronic reality game, is designed to encourage physical activity by providing virtual rewards for finding avatars in real-world locations. Although the game was designed for walkers, many players participate while driving; investigators evaluated the degree of distraction that was conferred to participants who were driving while playing.

Investigators identified more than 300,000 Twitter postings from July 10 to 19, 2016, that included keywords related to Pokémon GO and driving. Among 4000 randomly selected, de-identified tweets, 18% indicated that a driver was playing, 11% indicated that a passenger was playing, and 4% referenced a pedestrian player who was interacting with a motor vehicle. These percentages extrapolate t…