Italy targets phone-addicted pedestrians in road safety crackdown

Italy's updated highway code will target pedestrians who stare at their mobile phones while crossing the road, as the country's transport ministry strives to improve road safety by cracking down on distracted walking, the Guardian reported Monday.

The move follows several court rulings that assigned blame for road accidents to careless pedestrians, according to the Guardian's report. The draft code, which has been updated after those rulings, would make distracted crossing a finable offence.

The measure is part of a broader revision of Italy's highway code that has already introduced stricter penalties for drivers, including heavier fines for using phones at the wheel. The pedestrian provision extends the same logic to those on foot, a shift that reflects changing patterns of urban risk as smartphone use becomes ubiquitous.

For Milan, the provision lands in a city where pedestrian density is among the highest in Italy. The city's narrow historic streets and busy crossings around the Duomo and the Navigli canal district see constant foot traffic, much of it from tourists navigating unfamiliar routes with phones in hand. Municipal data on road accidents involving pedestrians has been a recurring concern for local administrators, though the new code would set a national standard rather than a city-specific rule.

The transport ministry has framed the change as a safety measure rather than a revenue generator, the Guardian reported. Critics, however, have questioned how the rule would be enforced in practice, given the difficulty of determining whether a pedestrian was looking at a phone at the moment of a violation.

The updated code is expected to come into force later this year, once it clears the parliamentary process. For now, pedestrians in Milan and across Italy face the prospect of fines for a habit that has become second nature, as the country's roads grow busier and its cities denser.

The measure also sits alongside broader road-safety efforts in Italy, which has one of the higher road-accident rates in Western Europe. The ministry has said the pedestrian provision is part of a package designed to reduce deaths and serious injuries on Italian roads, a goal that has gained urgency as traffic volumes return to pre-pandemic levels.