Headphone Related Death Toll Rises

Everyone loves sticking their headphones on whilst walking around town, including me, to escape from all the troubles and noise that the world brings. However, there could be some fatal side effects...

The number of pedestrians killed or injured while wearing headphones has grown in the US from 16 in 2004 to 47 in 2011, bringing the total number of cases in that period to 116.  The research, which was published in the British Journal of Injury Prevention, also found that over half of the incidents involved pedestrians who were run down by trains and two thirds of the victims overall, were males under 30.  The paper, which was headed by Richard Lichenstein of University of Maryland, Baltimore, warned that wearing headphones leads to a lack of awareness of your surroundings and lowers the resources the brain devotes to external stimuli.

Not a nice thing to hear, so listen carefully people.