Pedestrians are being reminder to be aware of their surroundings after a near miss at Woolooware earlier this month.
Vision captured on a dashcam show the moment a woman walks across an intersection on the Kingsway near Swan street.
She is wearing headphones and looking at her phone at she crosses in front of cars as the light turn greens.
As she crosses in front of the left lane a car drives through, running over her feet.
Witness Martin captured the vision and said the woman was fixated on her phone.
“Fixated on her phone with headphones on and in another world,’’ he said.
“She was very lucky. If she had been walking a little faster it would’ve been, I think, disastrous.”
The Pedestrian Council of Australia is currently running an unapologetically graphic campaign called ‘‘Dont’ Tune Out’’ which is almost a mirror of the real-life graphic footage captured at Woolooware earlier this month.
Harold Scruby, chairman and CEO of the council says incidents such as these were a modern day epidemic.
‘‘That person is very lucky to be alive,’’ Mr Scruby said.
‘‘She was completely out of it - she was not aware of anything going on around her. She probably thought she was still on the footpath
‘‘Never, ever, ever use a hand-held device when you are crossing any road.’’
The pedestrian council wants to see minimum penalties of $200 introduced for using hand-held mobile device when crossing road and they would also like to see council rangers assisting in the enforcement of the penalties.
‘‘It’s a modern day epidemic,” Mr Scruby said. “It’s lethal and we have to bring in change first through education and secondly through enforcement because too many people are being killed as a result of this behaviour.’’
Chief Inspector Phil Brooks from Traffic and Highway patrol said distracted pedestrians were putting themselves and other road users at risk.
‘‘Very sadly 182 lives lost on NSW roads so far this year out of which 24 were pedestrians.’’
