The Dark Side Of Selfies

When you're taking a photo of yourself, you tend to be oblivious to everything that's happening around you. After all, it's important to make sure the light is right, your hair is sufficiently wind-swept but not too wind-swept, and that your duck lips are duckalicious. That's fine if you're in your backyard, as long as

When you're taking a photo of yourself, you tend to be oblivious to everything that's happening around you. After all, it's important to make sure the light is right, your hair is sufficiently wind-swept but not too wind-swept, and that your duck lips are duckalicious. That's fine if you're in your backyard, as long as a rabid dog didn't happen to wander in through a hole in your fence, but if you're in public your self-absorption could actually endanger someone else's life.

According to ABC, selfie-taking was a problem at the 2014 Tour de France, with some spectators so eager to grab photos of themselves at the event that they would walk into the cyclists' paths and turn their backs. One rider reported a knee injury after having to dodge a selfie-taker, and others complained about the hazards of selfie-takers who "obviously don't see us coming."

Tour de France cyclists aren't the only people who have to worry about the hazards of oblivious selfie-takers — this is also a problem with drivers, too. There's even an Instagram tag for it, #drivingselfie, which at the end of 2018 had more than 31,000 posts. Shooting selfies while behind the wheel is just another form of distracted driving, which Nationwide Insurance says causes more than 3,300 deaths per year. So note to world: Generally speaking, any time you might endanger someone by not paying attention to what you're doing, that's probably a terrible time for a selfie.

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