They should call this app "The Darwinator"

Bill Boulware sent a link to this soon-to-be-notorious iPhone app:

Application Makes iPhone Disappear

Image from Wired Gadget Lab

[. . .] Fire up the app on your iPhone (this doesn’t work with the iPod Touch) and it overlays a transparent email window over a live view coming in from the camera. Effectively, this lets you look at the screen and compose your masterpiece while simultaneously watching the road ahead. Of course, it won’t work. Anyone who would write e-mail while walking is obviously too self-absorbed to pay attention the world around them. Let them walk under a bus.

If stats were being accurately compiled, Walkmen, iPods, and MP3 players in general would be contributing factors in a large percentage of pedestrian injuries and deaths over the last 10-15 years. This application, far from improving the situation, is likely to make things worse, because it will provide an illusion of making an unsafe combination of activities more safe. You can't save people from themselves, but letting them pretend that they're taking "adequate" precautions will make them more prone to doing stupid things.