That’s the rather surprising news coming from Australian police. They claim that MP3 players can be responsible for deaths in the shape of pedestrians knocked down by cars while crossing the road.

So serious are the Australian police force that they are running advertisements in the shape of hard hitting poster campaigns, across New South Wales warning of the dangers of listening to your iPod while crossing the road.

They want music lovers to avoid changing tracks on their MP3 players while they are out on the street so that they pay more attention to the dangers of the traffic around them.

The posters show what appear to be dead bodies lying on the roads, marked in an outline with a white iPod cable in place of the typical white chalk outline.

The Chief Traffic Services Commander of New South Wales, John Hartley, claims that the increasing amount of MP3 players and iPods that are being sold and used across Australia means that people should be made more aware of the dangers of using them while out and about. The campaign aims to target motorists as well as pedestrians.

Strangely enough John Hartley didn’t reveal any road death stats that were attributed to MP3 players.