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Girl engrossed in cell phone falls into sinkhole

In one of the more startling episodes of cell phone disaster, a girl in China disappears 20 feet under while chatting on her phone.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

The lady who fell into Lake Michigan while texting pales into deep insignificance in comparison to this.

Mr. Bean is but a mere construct of fiction when compared to this.

For here we have a Chinese girl, deeply committed to her cell phone conversation, when suddenly she disappears without even, it appears, a scream.

Yes, push didn't even need to come to shove here. One minute she was chatting away merrily. The next, she was headed toward Atlantis.

Of course, we wouldn't be smiling at her expense if she had been seriously hurt. The Telegraph reports that, after a little mental trauma, she was fine, though some might wonder why the pavement was so flimsy.

Apparently, running water had created a huge cavity beneath the surface that she fell into.

All the same, it is surely true that once one is in the grip of a cell phone conversation, oblivion tends to take over.

You'd think there would be more videos of people talking on cell phones walking into things.

But while we seem continually fascinated by texters suffering mishaps -- such as the lady who fell into a fountain at the mall -- mere phone talkers banging their heads or falling must be so common that no one posts film of them any more. Video of such events seem harder to find. (At least if you're me.)

There are some lovely videos of people talking on cell phones and then staring into the screens before falling. (I have also embedded an example of that below.)

And texting gems go back a few years now. As long ago as 2008, a British charity claimed that 1 in 10 people had suffered injury while texting and walking along the street. Indeed, the do-gooders attempted to wrap lampposts in cushioned material so that texters wouldn't walk into them and hurt themselves. (I have embedded the evidence.)

And yet cell phone talking mishaps seems to be more of a lost amusing video art than one had thought. Perhaps I've just been looking in the wrong places. Perhaps readers can unearth more examples like this lady who fell through the crust.