Walking while texting does send people in the US to emergency rooms. How often, has that changed since phones became nearly universal, and what usually goes wrong? The best recent count is a 2024 study by Mathias B. Forrester in Lower Extremity Review, built on the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), a national sample of hospital emergency departments.
The answer
US hospital emergency departments treated an estimated 37,344 injuries to people walking while using or carrying a cell phone from 2000 to 2023, counting every part of the body. That is a total for 24 years, not a yearly rate, and the estimates rose each period through 2016 to 2019, then dipped slightly, so a simple average would blur the story.
Of those injuries, 13,264 (35.5%) were to the legs and feet, the group the study breaks down in most detail. Ankles led, at 48.1% of the leg and foot injuries, followed by knees at 23.4%.
The trend
The study’s text gives leg and foot estimates for 3 of its 6 periods of four years each.
| Period | Estimated leg and foot injuries treated in US emergency departments |
|---|---|
| 2000 to 2003 | 34 |
| 2016 to 2019 | 4,477 |
| 2020 to 2023 | 4,381 |
The early figure is small, and the study notes that the CPSC treats any estimate below 1,200 as unstable. The study says the count appears to have stabilized in recent years. It says the rise is likely due to more people owning cell phones, and that records may also have noted phones more often over time.
How it happens
These shares cover the leg and foot injuries only. In 64.4% of them the person was texting on or looking at the phone, and in 16.6% the person was talking on it. Falls, including trips and slips, accounted for 63.1%, and hitting or being hit by a vehicle for 6.4%. The most common recorded location was other public property (27.5%), and 16.9% happened at home; 34.8% had no location recorded.
Patients aged 13 to 39 made up 69.1% of the leg and foot injuries, and most patients were female. Strains and sprains were the most common diagnosis, and most patients were treated in the emergency department and released.
Eyes on the screen
The attention cost shows up well away from the emergency room. In a 2010 study in Applied Cognitive Psychology, Ira Hyman and colleagues at Western Washington University found that people walking while talking on a cell phone were less likely than other walkers to notice an unusual sight on their route: a unicycling clown. Texting, which pulls the eyes down as well, was not part of that study.
Pedestrian deaths, for context
Separately, NHTSA counted 7,080 pedestrians killed in US traffic crashes in 2024, on average one every 74 minutes; its report does not count how many involved a phone. For the odds of dying on the road, see How Likely Are Americans to Die in Car Crashes?, and for phones behind the wheel, see Texting While Driving: The US Numbers.
How the count works
NEISS is run by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission and collects injury records from the emergency departments of about 100 hospitals, a probability sample of the more than 5,000 US hospitals with emergency departments, as the study describes it; each record carries a weight that turns the sample into national estimates. The study flagged records with the telephone product code or the word “phone” in the short case narrative, then read each one to decide whether a cell phone and walking were involved.
It counts only emergency department visits, one person chose the records, and the author calls the total likely an underestimate, partly because a narrative about talking on a phone at home could describe a cordless landline.
The short version
From 2000 to 2023, US emergency departments treated an estimated 37,344 injuries to people walking with a cell phone, according to one NEISS study. Among the leg and foot injuries, most happened while texting on or looking at the phone, and most were falls.
Last checked: 2026-10-22, against Forrester’s 2024 Lower Extremity Review study of NEISS data and NHTSA’s Pedestrians: 2024 Data fact sheet. This article was machine-checked against the sources above and has not been expert-reviewed. Spotted an error or a newer public figure? Please tell us on our contact page with the article link and we will review it.
Sources
- S1 Forrester MB. Cell Phone-Related Lower Extremity Injuries While Walking. Lower Extremity Review, November 2024. https://lermagazine.com/article/cell-phone-related-lower-extremity-injuries-while-walking . Accessed Oct 22, 2026. Data: National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), US Consumer Product Safety Commission.
- S2 National Center for Statistics and Analysis. Pedestrians: 2024 Data (Traffic Safety Facts, Report No. DOT HS 813 818), June 2026. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. https://doi.org/10.21949/zpk5-j413 . Accessed Oct 22, 2026.
- S3 Hyman IE, Boss SM, Wise BM, McKenzie KE, Caggiano JM. Did you see the unicycling clown? Inattentional blindness while walking and talking on a cell phone. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1638 . Abstract accessed Oct 22, 2026.