‘Pokemon Go’ players play n’ drive, Pokemon Go Plus hides some more features

Accidents because of “Pokemon Go” are a dime a dozen. Whether it’s from inadvertently being in the wrong place at the wrong time or, worse, driving while playing the app, it’s a case of distracted individuals and a failure at multitasking.

Apart from the many reports of these play ‘n’ drive, a new study has found over 110,000 instances of distracted driving with “Pokemon Go.” According to BBC, the instances were gathered over Twitter, wherein individuals were not only playing while driving, some were even updating their tweets while doing so.

Part of the tweets are updates from onlookers who may have caught sight of an accident that happened because of playing “Pokemon Go.” This is because the incidents also involve pedestrians on the road while playing Niantic Labs’ popular AR game.

A similar study has yet to be conducted in Australia and other parts of the world. But if the popularity of “Pokemon Go” is any indication, the findings are no-brainers. Driving not only allows one to go to places where Pokemon may pop out, there are still instances wherein a slow driving pace can actually track some distances for hatching eggs.

Niantic Labs has already taken some precaution to curb such incidents. When the app sense that the speed is too fast for someone who is casually walking and playing, a pop-up message will ask the “Pokemon Go” player to confirm that they are a passenger and not the driver.

The release of the Pokemon Go Plus is also a nice way to curb these distracted road incidents. The recently released accessory app has been tested by some players, who in turn, were able to enjoy catching ‘mons and getting stuff at PokeStops without whipping out their smartphones.

Add to this, there appears to be a few more features unannounced by the developer. Forbes reported that the feature of tracking buddy and egg-hatching distance has been confirmed to work with the Pokemon Go Plus accessory. Another changed feature was the confirmation that previously unseen or uncaught Pokemon can now be caught using the Pokemon Go Plus.

Of course, it’s still not the perfect device, as some fans have been seeing some issues with it to this day. Hopefully, Niantic Labs and Nintendo will keep improving even the accessory’s capabilities for future prototypes.