I am firmly in the camp of "Watch where you are going". I got a reprieve when I was about 9 years old. I was about to cross the road to join a friend, but saw a car coming. As soon as it passed, I started across and was almost scared out of my skin by screeching tires as the driver behind the car I saw braked hard to avoid hitting a stupid kid.
I figured that was my one chance. Some don't even get that, so I have been lucky.
When we visited Iceland this summer, we visited Gullfoss, a large waterfall. As we made our way to the edge of the gorge, I noticed the barrier designed to keep the hundreds of tourists (busloads delivered from Rekjavik) away from the edge: a length of 3/8 inch rope on wooden pegs, about 6 inches off the ground.
Do you know something? People were respecting it. They realized they were responsible for their own safety.
It is tragic this kid fell over a three foot barrier because he was paying more attention to his device than he was his surroundings. It would have been equally tragic if I had not had a Good Samaritan in the following car that day.
The long and short of it is: we teach our kids to watch out for traffic. We should be teaching them to watch where they are going too.
Les
