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City Installs Traffic Lights In Sidewalks For Smartphone Users (washingtonpost.com)
tlhIngan writes: It's finally happened -- the smartphone zombies are here. The German city of Augsburg installed traffic lights in the sidewalks so smartphone users don't have to look up. Apparently people are so addicted to their smartphones they can't be bothered to look up at traffic signals, so embedding them in the ground they don't have to. According to the Washington Post report, the city spokeswoman Stephanie Lermen thinks the money used to install the lights is well spent. A recent survey conducted in several European cities including Berlin, found that almost 20 percent of pedestrians were distracted by their smartphones. Of course, younger people are at higher risk as they're willing to risk their safety to look at their Facebook profiles or WhatsApp messages, the survey found. The problem may be even worse in the U.S: A survey by the University of Washington found that 1 in 3 Americans is busy texting or working on a smartphone at dangerous road crossings. City officials say installing the traffic lights is justified: The idea is to install such traffic lights came after a 15-year-old girl was killed by a tram. According to police reports, she was distracted by her smartphone as she crossed the tracks.
Won't this problem fix itself after a while?
Isn't this subverting the natural course of evolution?
because the phone zombies want to live too
At this point, why rely on visual cues outside of the phone at all? If they're looking at the phone and have location enabled, on-screen notifications could tell them when the light is green. This avoids them having to notice the periphery at all, which is less likely if they're into a particularly intense sexting session or game of Farmville.
Let Darwinism take its course.
Animal-types go through a life cycle: start out dinosaurs, grow big and powerful, realize limitations, and end up as birds, lizards and snakes. Humans are just one face of the monkey animal-type, and we will end up being Bonobos who can write PHP code.
The correct solution is to make every traffic light IoT enabled and to make an app that tells people when the lights change. It would only cost about $400 million or so. What are the Germans thinking?
----This message brought to you by Cisco(tm)
I don't care if it works in the short term. In the long term this is the wrong solution. Education is the right solution.
Make something idiot proof, and you just build a bigger idiot.
The fact that sidewalk streetlights have been implemented is a sure sign that not enough Darwin awards are being granted in the world today.
Given the time and a proper amount of texting drivers, this problem will eliminate itself.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Seriously, if people using the phones need this, they should be paying for the additional infrastructure themselves. Tax the sales of phones to pay for this so those who aren't idiots don't have to.
Nice to see a government that cares about keeping people safe rather than just taking their money and scolding them.
Can we please give Darwin his fucking due, here? We don't need new traffic signals, we need idiots to exit the gene pool.
Just make it legal to hit people texting while crossing the road, and the problem neatly goes away.
And so you link to the daily mail, please go kill yourself.
Seriously, let them die. Don't spend money on them that could be going tgo helping people that aren't self-centered pricks. If you are unwilling to practice basic self-preservation then the world has a right to spit you out.
If a girl can't notice a train, they are not going to notice lights on the ground. If they can't even notice they are walking into a street... I bet they think all drivers will stop to let them pass.
Ok, lets forget highway improvements, lets put all that money into putting lights into the sidewalks!
That's a good point. It reminds me of the people who drive into lakes because their GPS tells them to turn there, or people treating information from business, government, NGOs and academia as infallible.
Here we would blame the user for not excercising caution and point at the safety disclaimer that came with the phone.
In addition spending money safety and environmental protection is sure way to bancrupcy.
I have a better, and cheaper idea.
Metal signs embedded in the pavement, in Day-Glo colors, that say LOOK UP YOU MORON. Or whatever they say in Germany.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
App appers should use app apps for apping apps, NOT LUDDITE TRAFFIC LIGHTS!
Apps!
If you're walking down a busy street gazing down at your cell phone, I'd like to install my shoe up your ass.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Halle (Saale) in Germany has this for 5 years now!
http://www.mz-web.de/halle-saale/verkehr-grelles-licht-an-halles-gefaehrlichstem-ueberweg-7828682
I grew up in a small framing community outside of Chicago and then went to college in Chicago. In one of my first few weeks there, a new friend who was from the city told me to stop looking down at the sidewalk. I asked why and he told me, that is how you get yourself mugged.
We talked about it and I realized, being from a land of no sidewalks, I always scan the ground to make sure of my footing so I don't trip on uneven ground. In the city, sidewalks are much more level and predictable so people don't have to look down. Also pickpockets and muggers look for easy targets that can't identify them. My friend told me, he was always taught, look up and look at the people around you. If you make eye contact with a mugger, there is a chance you will be able to ID him so they look for another target.
I am thinking, all these peoples looking down at their phone are an excellent target for being pick pocketed! I may have to change professions!
And so you link to the daily mail, please go kill yourself.
Actually the Daily Mail gives us detail about many US stories that are for various reasons suppressed domestically. A recent example is that high school girl killed by bullies in the girls' bathroom in Wilmington DE:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
While it is obvious that this "solution" solves nothing and protects no one, the solutions put forward here are equally useless. No one who does not look up when crossing the road will install an app to make street crossings easier (and that is ignoring the technical hurdle of figuring out which road the user is crossing at the intersection, which seems like an unsolvable problem to me). And if they are engrossed in their phone, they are equally as likely to miss any indicators, on the ground, in the sky, or anywhere in-between.
If you want to protect people from themselves, you need some sort of barrier or arm that physically blocks forward movement. Nothing else will register to someone who will miss a train barrelling towards them.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Oh yeah, that wasn't reported at all in the US. What a moron. It was on every fucking newscast both locally and nationally. Including Fox News and CNN.
How about something that smacks drivers in the head when they pull a FULL car length PAST the stop line before even thinking about stopping knowing full well that if approaching cars are just barely far enough away they'd blow right through the stop sign? News flash, people, you're not that important and neither is whatever you're racing to.
The loss of situational awareness makes people more susceptible to bad outcomes because the warning cues don't get through. Hence walking into traffic while looking at a screen. Obviously reading and walking can have the same result, but before the advent of current smartphones there were far fewer people who acted that irresponsibly. Also it was not social acceptable because most people realized the potential hazard. Now that smartphones are ubiquitous social norms have changed and people just don't care about what's going on around them.
A more direct way to say it is that people now act very stupidly in public. They inhabit a personal bubble and blindly assume that reality will never intrude. There will never be enough padding in the world to protect them from a lack of attention. To quote Forrest Gump, "Stupid is as stupid does".
Why is Snark Required?
So using a cell phone while driving and causing an accident is clearly the driver's fault, but using a cell phone while walking and causing an accident is the city's fault?
Double standard, much?
Getting hacked. After people begin to trust it, they will assume it's okay to walk. Some more miscreant will surely take advantage of this and send the lemmings over the cliff.
march to the bottom continues.
Then you can "see through" the phone...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The linked story includes a number of details, including pictures taken at the scene, that we have not seen.
How long before someone sues a municipality when their precious snowflake gets run down at an intersection that does not have these lights?
If you want to protect people from themselves, you need some sort of barrier or arm that physically blocks forward movement. Nothing else will register to someone who will miss a train barrelling towards them.
Trams (or what is called streetcar in the US, according to wikipedia) share the road with cars (but have the right of way). Barriers are not a practical solution.
This is another example of governments rewarding/subsidizing bad behavior. It needs to stop.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Why not let "nature" take its course...
Texters/SmartPhoners walk into traffic and are injured or expire.
The Darwin Award winners will continue to walk and text/talk/watch/chew gum.
The smart ones, with genes we want to preserve, will adapt and survive.
The population bomb will be defused.
Unemployment will go down.
Governments' expense will go down.
Productivity will soar.
"Things" will get better.
But, no, the (Federal, State. Local) Governments will step in and try to outlaw "stupid".
You can't cure stupid -- Ron White.
1. This doesn't work under snow; but...
2. Install these in roads too; because:
3. They tell you to keep your eyes on the road, and then hang the traffic lights as high as possible, and maybe behind another traffic sign or maybe a tree's corona when it's not winter?
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
You'd rather have the financial impact of swathes of the population being killed in easily-preventable ways, just so you can feel superior to them?
If they cannot be bothered to look up at a light it means they aren't watching for traffic either. Believe it or not there is more to watch for than just the light. If some idiot wants to wait another cycle because they can't be bothered to look up from their phone then I don't really see the problem. If they are dumb enough to walk out into traffic without actually looking up then they are candidates for a Darwin award. I don't wish anyone to be hurt but if they are because they were idiots I wouldn't feel bad for very long.
Apologies to Ron White but you can't fix stupid.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Please, not the Daily Mail
Have gnu, will travel.
Now if they would get the bicyclists off the sidewalk. I was almost run over by a dumbass bicyclist who was texting and riding on the sidewalk.
Then it sounds like Germany found a good use for that old tech.
For all those who say "let stupid solve itself" - I for one actually like this idea. Not for smartphone users. But for kids and other adults - large trucks and trains can block the crosswalk light. My son is learning to cross the road himself and currently knows to Stop at the Yellow mat on the sidewalk (we have these big yellow rubber mats installed in the sidewalk). The road itself has either White painted stripes or inlaid faux Brick crossings.
So having a row of Red Lights on the ground like a little fence seems like a great safety idea. Like Railroad crossing gates. A fence at foot level.
A better UI !!
I've hacked on smartphones being anything but 'smart' for quite some time now, because of the cost of the phone, getting gouged for overpriced, underperforming, capped data plans from the highway robbers masquerading as wireless companies, and the fact that all smartphones have more holes in their security than a swisscheese, but now I have a whole new reason to never want a smartphone: I don't want to be associated with these mouth-breathers whose eyes are so thoroughly glued to their gods-be-damned phones, that they'd walk out into the middle of a busy street and get hit by a car, and some municipality therefore feels the need to install gods-be-damned traffic signals on the sidewalk to keep these idiots from killing themselves. Nope, no, hell no, don't want to be associated with them, at all, ever.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Most advanced airports have a similar system called RWSL for planes. I wish this system would be adopted for all road markers and stopngolights by every city. That way when it snows out four lane roads donâ(TM)t turn it one lane getoutofmywayfests.
You want to protect people from their own behavior by using force and other people's money, and you claim someone else is trying to feel superior? Welcome to Orwellian speak..
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Dependency on signals is already questionable. A traffic light tells you if you have legal entitlement to right of way, and other traffic is obliged to stop. Paper walls are great, but I'd be an idiot to make them my sole confirmation of whether a two-ton mass is still flying towards my delicate flesh.
Fortunately *I* have ocular organs that can instantly analyze whether that's the case, and report it on neural channels that have historically delivered 100% accuracy on whether large masses are hurtling. No dependencies for me, thanks.
You blind types will still have to rely on it, sorry.
The creators of the popular competition, the Darwin Awards, is suing the city of Augsburg.
Change the laws so that drivers are not liable if they hit a pedestrian when it's the drivers lawful right of way.
Sometimes a person just has a bad day... maybe their S.O. starts a heated argument via g-chat. Then they get distracted, make a mistake, and with the worst timing, the city bus that doesn't give a damn plows on through. But the prevailing wisdom on /. is that hey, they're dumb and deserved it, right?
I'm confused as to how this works. We are assuming that people that can't look down to see TRAIN TRACKS will actually notice the lights on the ground right next to the TRAIN TRACKS. I use to think Germans and European leaders were a little smarter than us here in the US, but apparently they have plenty of stupid people in charge, too.
Every day, the muppets on their way to work or wherever. It's got worse since some clever dick decided it would be a good idea to install Wi-Fi. On the escalators, through the tunnels, on the platforms, they rarely look up to see where they're going. Auto-pilots I think. No sense. However, it allows a new game to be played. It's called my right of way. If you don't see me coming, I'm not moving for you. In fact, I'll speed up. Don't get me wrong, I'll still apologise when you drop your phone. It's only polite to do so, and very British.
#phonezombieslivesmatter
These light strips should also be visible to seeing-eye dogs, who could be trained to stop their owner when turned on. Since dogs are colorblind, that's assuming they just turn off and on, not red and green.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Although I'd normally snark this one to death, having flashing LEDs at a crossing for pedestrian control *as well as* for vehicle control isn't a bad idea, really. We have a couple of those here in San Diego on notoriously unsafe crossings, or areas where cars have a tendency to fail to notice the normal crosswalk signaling but they don't want to put a full traffic light in.
Those with failing eyesight or using guide-dogs might also benefit from this.
It's a horrible thing to *have* to put in, but as probably just one arrow in the quiver of options for making some specific intersection safer it's fine by me.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Shouldn't they be handing out tickets and fines to pedestrians that are using public streets while distracted?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Great for the auto drivers that have swerved onto the sidewalks while surfing the web on their phones.
WTF!
Just like London, England where they put bumper cushions on street lamps and poles so people wouldn't hurt themselves when they walked into the object while mesmerized by their DUMB phones. God give your head a shake bureaucrats. You're spending public funds to rectify a problem to protect people from hurting themselves. Can't people take responsibility for themselves any more.?
I think it's about time the telecom corp.'s took some responsibility for this? My heaqrt and prayers go out to the parents of that poor 15 year old who was killed by a tram while looking at her phone. She wouldn't be glued to her phone if the "enticing" ads put on TV and wherever didn't make her feel like she wasn't keeping up with the rest of the phone addicts. She is a product of our media ad blitz on our kids!