DART issues warning for distracted Pokemon Go players

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DART is the latest organization issuing preemptive warnings about playing the Pokemon mobile game on their property.

The company believes fast moving trains and buses mixed with distracted Pokemon Go players aren’t the best combination. A DART spokesman said they’re worried it's just a matter of time before someone is seriously injured.

There’s been plenty of Pokemon fails since the games release: inattentive guy wrecks car and players walking off a cliff. It’s exactly the kind of mishaps North Texas businesses, like DART, want to avoid.

“As long as people are playing games on our property and not paying attention to their surroundings, something bad could happen,” warned DART Spokesman Mark Ball.

The DART text alert is pretty clear: "You can't play if you're dead.”

Pointing out the obvious? Absolutely.

“We know it's happened before because of people not paying attention while looking at their cell phones or listening to their music,” said Ball. “And we're hoping that it doesn't happen because of Pokemon.”

DART certainly isn't alone in their concerns. The Medical Center of McKinney asked players not to play near their emergency helipad after realizing the pad was a Pokestop.

Nelson Hughes regularly rides his around White Rock Lake.

“Now you have people that are paying attention to their phones even more than normal,” Hughes said. “So you really have to pay attention, or you are going to get into some serous difficulty.”

Amy Spence and Kyle Owen are avid players who love throwing Pokeballs and hatching lucky eggs at the lake. But they also see the humor and some absurdity in the craze.

“I've seen one story where the lady said, ‘The game told me to cross the highway to get the Pikachu,’” Owen recalled. “It didn't tell you to cross the highway. It just said it was over there. How you get to the other side is up to you.”

Spence and Owen said they have no plans of starring in the next Pokeman fail video as they try to ‘catch 'em all’ and become the next Pokemon master.

“That's all user error, in my opinion,” said Owen. “I mean, you've got to be aware of your surroundings.”

The game itself does have a warning about watching out for your surroundings as soon as you open the app.

DART said they don’t have plans of making a huge campaign for the warning but felt it was a message worth sending.