A cyclist in Japan has died from injuries sustained when she was hit by a motorist who was distracted as he tried to charge his mobile phone, with the battery almost drained because he had been playing the hugely popular smartphone app Pokemon GO at the wheel.
The victim, aged in her 20s and a Vietnamese national living in Kasugai in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture, a little over a fortnight after the collision, reports the Japan Times, which says it is the second fatality believed to be due to a driver playing the game.
Initially, the driver, a man also aged in his 20s, had been arrested on suspicion of negligence resulting in injury. Since the victim died, police are now investigating the incident as one of negligence resulting in death.
Last Tuesday, 72-year-old Sachiko Nakanishi was killed and Kayoko Ikawa, 60, seriously injured when they were struck by a driver as the crossed the road in Tokushima.
The motorist, 39-year-old farmer Keiji Goo, subsequently admitted to police that he had been playing the game at the time of the fatal crash.
> Cyclist passes footage of London drivers playing Pokemon GO to police
Ahead of its launch in Japan on 22 July, road safety bodies there had warned about potential dangers associated with people, including drivers, being distracted while playing the augmented reality game.
Similar concerns had been raised by police and transport authorities at the app’s earlier launch in Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
> Safety concerns follow Pokemon GO launch
Last week, Japan’s National Police Agency said that since the Pokemon GO smartphone app went live in the country, use of it had been linked to 79 road traffic incidents.
> Woman arrested for stealing child's bike to go Pokemon hunting
Born in Scotland, Simon moved to London aged seven and now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with his miniature schnauzer, Elodie. He fell in love with cycling one Saturday morning in 1994 while living in Italy when Milan-San Remo went past his front door. A daily cycle commuter in London back before riding to work started to boom, he's been news editor at road.cc since 2009. Handily for work, he speaks French and Italian. He doesn't get to ride his Colnago as often as he'd like, and freely admits he's much more adept at cooking than fettling with bikes.