It’s hard to know when an observation indicates a real change, or whether you just started noticing it more. For example, it’s common for people to take note when they see something three times in a day. E.g., “I’d never even heard of zucchini bread, and then I heard it mentioned three times in one day!”
It’s possible you had heard of zucchini bread before, you just never paid attention, and this time you did. It’s also not that unusual for there to be clumps in random distributions.
So I make this observation with the understanding that it might not have any significance at all, but it seems to me that it’s far more common these days for drivers to slow down or stop in the middle of the road, without any consideration for the people around them. I blame this on Google maps, and similar technology. People slow down or stop to read the directions.
But I’m curious if anyone else has noticed this.
I’ve not noticed what you’ve seen but I’ve noticed many looking at their phones during traffic stops. I suspect they are looking at all sorts of things such as maps, news and video calls. I suspect phones have upped the frequency of such occurrences.