Should we ban walking while wired?

You’ve had the experience of walking along and negotiating around someone who is walking slowly, weaving or bumping into other pedestrians for an obvious reason: He or she is talking on a cell phone, listening to an iPod or texting on a Blackberry. And you’ve had the natural, inevitable response to this annoyance: demanding a law to prevent it.

Oh, you haven’t responded that way? Well, Carl Kruger has. The state senator from Brooklyn, N.Y., wants to make it illegal to use an electronic device while crossing a big-city street on foot. He has an ally in Arkansas state Sen. Jimmy Jeffress, who wants to ban pedestrians from wearing headphones in both ears on or near a roadway.