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Chinese City Sets Up "No Cell Phone" Pedestrian Lanes
An anonymous reader writes The Chinese city of Chongqing has created a smartphone sidewalk lane, offering a path for those too caught up in messaging and tweeting to watch where they're going. "There are lots of elderly people and children in our street, and walking with your cell phone may cause unnecessary collisions here," said Nong Cheng, a spokeswoman for the district's property management company. However, she clarified that the initiative was meant to be a satirical way to highlight the dangers of texting and walking.
It finally pays off.
They've got the best traffic lights/timers/redlight camera system in place.
If everywhere did that, we'd stop hearing so much BS.
"...she clarified that the initiative was meant to be a satirical way to highlight the dangers of texting and walking."
Regardless of the original intent, if it is a device that allows human beings to ignore each other and stay tethered to social media with even greater efficiency, there will be no amount of money or time large enough to stand in the way of budgeting or building it.
What started out as a joke will become the next major city project.
may cause unnecessary collisions here
As opposed to the necessary ones.
http://improveverywhere.com/2010/06/08/the-tourist :)
Here's another one
We're entering an age of innovation. There's no question!
Its about damn time!!
I don't want to do a sig now
... seriously, sent the texting/chatting group into a lane that walks them right into traffic. That way, you address China's population problem, and you remove lots of idiots from the genepool (hopefully), or at least take out some of those who endanger the rest of us (I can only imagine how those types drive...). The one's who don't walk into traffic survive their Darwinism test.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
let all the texting/tweeting drivers go into a special lane just for them.
Build concrete dividers between that and regular lanes. With titanium reinforcements.
it wasn't the city, it was the property manager.
We should also have a lane for those damned elderly and children. They can't walk for shit, either.
the cellphones lane ends with a hole in the ground. So that all those idiots who are too busy looking down at their phone to look forward, fall in it and die.
So instead of looking down at their devices, they are looking down at the signs on the sidewalk; and taking photos of them. A questionable improvement.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Here's a video of someone using the new texting lane
I'm almost 40, so maybe that explains it, but WTF is with people who cannot put their devices down and just pay attention to what's going on around them?
What exactly so compelling that you can't take ten or fifteen minutes away from it to walk somewhere?
I haven't read all of the posts since the original story hit the front page, so I may be touching on something that's already been discussed, but ...
I don't understand how this is different from people just being unaware of their surroundings. I have been to many places in the last 20 years where people will just stop right in the middle of the sidewalk/thoroughfare/pathway to have a conversation or family dispute. The concept of stepping to the side out of the way so that the other 1000 people who aren't having a family issue doesn't seem to occur to them. Cell phones? Just the latest distraction. Oblivious people are forever.
this is a reference to the woman in Austrailia who was so entranced talking on a cell phone she walked off the end of a pier into the ocean. She was rescued, still holding her phone. No idea if the was waterproof.
BTW, about 13 years ago I was almost ran over by a Yahoo on a cell phone when I was crossing the street in broad daylight. By almost I mean I back pedaled my last step; if I had gone forward I would have been meat.