Study finds that Pokémon Go led to increase of traffic accidents and fatalities

Purdue professors Mara Faccio and John J. McConnell have studied over 12,000 accident reports in Tippecanoe County, Indiana. They looked at data both before and after the launch of Pokemon GO, and have come to quite a scary conclusion.

Based on detailed police accident reports for Tippecanoe County, Indiana, and using the introduction of the virtual reality game Pokémon GO as a natural experiment, we document a disproportionate increase in vehicular crashes and associated vehicular damage, personal injuries, and fatalities in the vicinity of locations, called PokéStops, where users can play the game while driving. The results are robust to using points of play, called Gyms, that cannot be used to play the game while driving as a placebo. We estimate the total incremental county-wide cost of users playing Pokémon GO while driving, including the value of the two incremental human lives lost, to be in the range of $5.2 million to $25.5 million over only the 148 days following the introduction of the game. Extrapolation of these estimates to nation-wide levels yields a total ranging from $2 to $7.3 billion for the same period.

This is some serious stuff we're talking about here. Not exactly a fun topic to cover, but still important. You can read more from the study here.