Researchers study "selfie fatalities" to end problem

The number of deaths due to the selfie craze is on the rise and a team of US researchers now hopes to tackle the problem. The researchers are developing an app that will warn people when they are at risk. In their research the team found that 15 selfie-takers died in 2014, 39 in 2015 and 73 died in the first eight months of 2016.

They revealed where most incidents happen how causes of death could change depending on where in the world one lived.

The study had been led by PhD student Hemank Lamba and a team of friends at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

The first reported incident of a selfie-taker dying while snapping a picture happened in March 2014. Following this, the researchers found that there had been 127 recorded incidents of selfie deaths across the world with 76 deaths in India and nine in Pakistan. Eight cases had been reported from US and six in Russia. 

Falls from heights accounted for most of the causes of death, as went to extreme lengths to take a selfie on cliffs or the top of buildings to impress followers on social media.

There were more selfie deaths related to trains in India, which Hemank and his team said was due to "the belief that posing on or next to train tracks with their best friend is regarded as romantic and a sign of never-ending friendship."

Meanwhile, Digital Trends reported another initiative along similar lines was underway in India.

''There was a news article that was circulated in my research group about a death by selfie during summer 2016,'' Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, a professor at Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology in Delhi, told Digital Trends. ''I was disturbed by reading it, exchanged some emails on this topic and found little work - especially from a technology standpoint - [had been carried out]. Our group is always interested in working on topics, technologies, solutions and systems that have real-world impact, so we jumped on it.''

''One of the directions that we are working on is to have the camera give the user information about [whether or not a particular location is] dangerous, with some score attached to it,'' Kumaraguru continued.