On: Yamato becomes Japan's first city to 'ban' use of phones while walking

[Barrin92]

pretty difficult to know how high the compliance actually was. One of the first articles I could find was that the police found it difficult to apply.

So likely less of an issue of it not being dangerous but rather hard to enforce.

[kwhitefoot → Barrin92]

My impression was that analysis of the accident statistics failed to reveal any effect. Of course that doesn't mean that there wasn't one but it does suggest that it was too small to be useful.