A bill pending in the New York State legislature's transportation committee would ban the use by pedestrians of mobile phones, iPods or other electronic devices while crossing streets, according to an article in today's edition of The New York Times by Susan Saulny and Matt Richtel.

"Many joggers don earbuds and listen to music to distract themselves from the rigors of running. But might the Black Eyed Peas or Rihanna distract them so much that they jog into traffic? That is the theory of several lawmakers pushing the latest generation of legislation dealing with how devices like iPods and cellphones affect traffic safety. The ubiquity of interactive devices has propelled the science of distraction - and now efforts to legislate against it - out of the car and into the exercise routine," the article said.

"'The big thing has been distracted driving, but now it's moving into other ways technology can distract you, into everyday things,' said Anne Teigen, a policy specialist for the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks legislative developments," the article said.

"Exercising in Central Park on Tuesday, Marie Wickham, 56, said she understood what all the fuss was about: 'They're zigging, they're zagging, they don't know what's around them. It can definitely be dangerous.' But Ms. Wickham added that she would be opposed to any ban of such devices. 'I think it's an infringement on personal rights,' she said. 'At some point, we need to take responsibility for our own stupidity,'" the article continued.

Pedestrian fatalities increased slightly for the first time in four years in the first six months of 2010, according to a report released last week by the Governors Highway Safety Association, an organization based in Washington that represents state highway safety agencies. "One of the reasons we think the trend may be turning negatively is because of distracted pedestrians," said Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the safety group.

The New York bill was proposed by State Senator Carl Kruger, a Brooklyn Democrat who has grown alarmed by the amount of distraction he sees on the streets in his neighborhood and across New York City. Since September, Mr. Kruger wrote in the bill, three pedestrians have been killed and one was critically injured while crossing streets and listening to music through headphones.

"We're taught from knee-high to look in both directions, wait, listen and then cross," he said. "You can perform none of those functions if you are engaged in some kind of wired activity."

Hal Pashler, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, said that listening to sounds through two earbuds creates a particularly powerful kind of "auditory masking" that drowns out external sounds. Such masking not only goes directly into the ear, it also is involuntary in the sense that the sound floods the brain even when a person tries to listen to something else - say, traffic. "It's even more overwhelming than the kind of multitasking costs we normally talk about," Mr. Pashler said.