Warning Issued After Four Females Break Arms and Wrists While Taking Selfies
Since the advent of mobile communication, accidents have been recorded relating to the use of cellphones. Most of these mishaps were blamed on the distraction posed by cellphone usage while doing another activity. An example is a pedestrian who was texting while walking until he fell into an open manhole.
The National Safety Council reported that cellphone usage while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes annually. It also recorded 330,000 injuries every year caused by texting while driving. The incident has become prevalent that this has become the cause for one out of four car accidents in the U.S.
The development of smartphones has added to the cause of accidents. The Irish Medical Journal issued a warning about a rise in "self-induced" wrist or arm breaks as a result of taking selfies. The word "selfie," which means to take a photo of oneself with a smartphone, ceased to be a slang term when it made it into the Oxford dictionary in 2013.
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The Department of Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery in Galway University Hospital reported treating four patients who broke their arms and wrists while taking selfies in just a single week last summer. It noted that the fractured limbs were free when the accidents happened, indicating that the patients were protective of their smartphones.
One of them, a 13-year-old girl, tried to take a selfie while jumping on a trampoline until she fell onto her right hand that wasn't holding the smartphone. Another is a 40-year-old female who walked two steps backward on uneven ground while trying to take a selfie until she fell on the rocks.
There was also a 17-year-old female who fell while running up the steps of a seaside promenade while taking a selfie. A 27-year-old female sports reporter was trying to take a selfie with her teammates on the stairs when she fell four steps down. All the victims had to be placed in casts for four to six weeks.
