Skip to main content

‘Pokémon Go’ just became even harder to play while driving

Still playing Pokémon Go? While many millions of smartphone users may by now have caught everything they wanted to catch, there are still plenty of diehard fans out there who can’t bear to turn away from the augmented-reality game.

That’s all well and good, though not so if any of them are so addicted they have to play while driving.

Recommended Videos

A number of Go-related road accidents and even deaths have been reported since the game launched over the summer, prompting the its creator to this week roll out yet another update aimed at stopping the practice once and for all.

It tried discouraging drivers from playing the game with an update in August that prompted players to indicate whether they were a driver or a passenger. The pop-up message appeared whenever the game detected you were in a moving vehicle, but to continue playing, the passenger – or dishonest driver – simply had to tap on the “I’m a passenger” button.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it doesn’t seem to have had much effect. So the company is having another go. Following its latest update, if the game detects that you’re in a vehicle traveling at more than 30 mph, Pokémon will stop appearing in your area.

Trouble is, that means everyone in the car is prevented from playing. Ditto if you’re a train, bus, taxi, or Uber passenger.

It means Go addicts intent on driving and playing will have to travel at 29 mph everywhere they go, or simply crawl around the neighborhood in their vehicle like this guy did. Though he ended up getting pulled over by the cops for his efforts.

It didn’t take long for stories to surface of accidents caused by Go drivers. A guy in Baltimore, for example, admitted he’d been trying to catch ’em all when he slammed into, of all things, a cop car.

Meanwhile, this guy drove straight into a tree in a residential neighborhood four days after downloading the game. “I broke both my ankles and I suffered a deep laceration on my elbow and knee as well as cuts and bruises,” Steven Cary told the Guardian. And no, he didn’t catch the Lapras he was after.

Cops in Melbourne, Australia arrived at the scene of a crash where a man had been “trying to capture a creature from the Pokémon Go app” when he ended up careering off the road and into a school. Fortunately no one was hurt.

An elderly woman in Japan, however, wasn’t so lucky. The 72 year old was out walking with a friend in August when she was hit and killed by a truck. The driver was allegedly playing the popular smartphone game when the accident occurred.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Pokémon Go developer’s next Nintendo AR game is Pikmin Bloom
Pikmin grow flowers as they walk in a park.

Niantic, the developer of the well-known Pokémon Go, has announced Pikmin Bloom, its latest AR game. The game was teased earlier this year, but there have been few details up to this point. The game will be available on mobile devices in Australia and Singapore starting Tuesday, then on phones worldwide in the coming days. Like Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom will be free to download, but there are few similarities between the two titles.

Pikmin Bloom - Extended Announcement Trailer + Miyamoto (Nintendo Mobile)

Read more
Pokémon No Day: Why fans are boycotting Pokémon Go today
Style your in-game avatar however you want.

Pokémon Go fans are boycotting the popular mobile video game today with a protest dubbed Pokémon No Day. The boycott, which has gained traction on Twitter, is intended to speak out against Niantic rolling back the game's COVID-19 friendly updates.

As the world fell into a lockdown in 2020, Pokémon Go developer Niantic had to act fast. Pokémon Go used to require that players go outside and walk around to catch some Pokémon. However, with COVID-19 spreading, doing so became dangerous. To keep players playing, Niantic opted to make it possible to play Pokemon Go from home. However, the developer is now rolling back those changes, even as a new Delta variant of the virus spreads. Understandably, fans are not happy and are taking today to boycott the game.

Read more
Pokémon Go gets a special New Pokémon Snap event featuring a shiny Smeargle
Pokemon Go

Pokémon Go is getting a special event to celebrate the release of New Pokémon Snap. Players will be able to grab some photography-themed goodies and have a chance to catch a shiny Smeargle.

New Pokémon Snap, a sequel to a 1999 Nintendo 64 photography game, comes to Nintendo Switch at the end of the month. Pokémon Go's special event lines up with the game's release window. It'll begin one day before the Switch game launches on Thursday, April 29, and end on Sunday, May 2.

Read more