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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.
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.
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!
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.
Or, use Near Field Communication (NFC) to shut down their phone when they approach the curb.
It could then be expanded to other places, say every movie theatre seat, and elevators.
It's not just about saving the life of the person who is not paying attention. If they walk out into traffic other people may be hurt such as the driver of the car or passengers or the car may hit other people if the driver swerves. Then there is the psychological trauma, especially for the driver of the vehicle. But it's also for other passengers, the bystanders, and the emergency response crews. Plus you have the impact on the family and friends. Not just for the person who wasn't looking but for anyone else who was hurt physically and/or mentally. And finally you have any damage that needs to be repaired. It's not as important as the rest but it still needs to be taken into account.
So no, it's not just the government trying to protect a single person from every possible calamity. In this case it's the government trying to protect a whole bunch of us from someone being an idiot.
Even if the single person would prove itself inept at the task at hand (crossing a road), it might have other interesting abilities that will help other people to overcome other obstacles in life. Every single specimen who survives and procreates, broadens the DNA pool, and adds more variability to it, and if there comes a massive change in the environment, species with larger DNA pools have better chances to find the DNA combination that helps the species to survive.
At the KT boundary, famous for wiping out the dinosaurs, it was not exactly the dinosaurs, which got wiped out, it was in fact all animal life with body sizes of more than three feet at land and a little more in the oceans. If a species grows larger, it has less specimen, and thus less DNA variability to speedily find a new DNA combination fit for survival under new conditions. Large species only thrive if the conditions stay constant for a long time. At the KT boundary, all small dinosaurs survived, known as birds today. And all small, furry animals living in caves survived too, known as mammals. Small reptiles survived too, snakes and lizards and small turtles. Small vertebrae in the oceans survived, today's fishes and some water turtles. Mosasauridae died out.
Whoever thinks that letting people die and thus "improving the DNA pool" is a good idea, does not really understand Darwinian evolution.
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.