Police in one New Jersey town are putting their foot down for pedestrians.

Motorists who failed to yield for people crossing the street in Fort Lee  paid the price recently when cops went undercover to nab rude drivers at one of the city’s most dangerous intersections.

Police issued 56 summonses during a four-hour period on Friday when a plainclothes officer repeatedly crossed the street in one of the town's least pedestrian friendly intersections, according to The Record.

When driver’s failed to yield, they were  pulled over down the street by another waiting officer.

The crosswalk sting is in response to a spike in the number of accidents involving pedestrians. Twelve people have been struck by cars so far this year in the northern New Jersey town, the paper reported.

Last year, 68 pedestrians were hit, including four deaths.

Fort Lee, located just outside New York City, has had problems with pedestrian safety in the past.  A year earlier they mounted a similar campaign to help increase walkers safety.

But some Garden State driver’s called in question how the undercover sting was being enforced.

“I did not see him at all, which means he was not on the street,” Katie Graziano, who received a ticket, told The Record.  “It’s the most bogus thing I’ve ever seen.”

Anna Marie Stickel never heard the train coming. The 14-year-old was listening to music on her iPod while walking along the railroad track, taking a shortcut to school after missing the morning bus.

An Amtrak train traveling south along the stretch of track in Maryland's Middle River struck her from behind, instantly killing the high school freshman on Jan. 5, 2010.

Anna's tragic story sparked a national study examining the dangers associated with pedestrian use of headphones, according to Dr. Richard Lichenstein, director of Pediatric Emergency Medicine Research at the University of Maryland Hospital for Children in Baltimore. She was among 116 cases studied. 

The findings: Wearing headphones while walking on roads can be a fatal distraction.

The number of people killed or seriously injured as a result of not being aware of their surroundings because they were wearing headphones has tripled in the past six years, Lichenstein said.

Results were published Tuesday in the journal Injury Prevention. The study found:

• The number of deaths of people wearing headphones increased from 16 in 2004-2005 to 47 in 2010-2011.
• The majority were male (68 percent) and 67 percent were under the age of 30.
• The majority of vehicles involved were trains (55 percent).
• 89 percent of cases occurred in urban counties.

Lichenstein and three researchers delved into the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, Google News Archives and Westlaw Campus Research Database from Jan. 1, 2004 to June 1, 2011.

"Sensory deprivation that results from using headphones with electronic devices may be a unique problem in pedestrian incidents, where auditory cues can be more important than visual ones,” the study cited.

Click here to read the original article (pdf)

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