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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.
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.
Because it's the government job to protect every person from every single possible calamity which may befall that person rather than encouraging people to take responsibility for themselves.
Essentially, you're admitting people are too stupid to take care of themselves so Big Brother has to do so.
Are these the kind of people we want to perpetuate our species? Ones who can't think or act for themselves?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"...we will end up being Bonobos who can write PHP code"
No, bonobos code in Visual Basic.
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.
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?
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.
The linked story includes a number of details, including pictures taken at the scene, that we have not seen.
Are these the kind of people we want to perpetuate our species? Ones who can't think or act for themselves?
Thousands of years of religion haven't extinguished humanity, so don't be too concerned about cell phones.
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.
You hit the nail on the head with that last word. Idiot. They are everywhere. The government can no more protect us from them than they can protect idiots from themselves. Make something idiot proof, evolution produces a greater idiot.
But at what expense. The result of idiot proofing the world has very real economic impacts not just because the government is spending money but also due to the regulations they introduce and the effort and lost time caused by retrospective compliance.
The only thing they achieve is spending money and training another generation of soft mindless idiots that the world will look after them.
maybe their S.O. starts a heated argument via g-chat.
That's when my phone battery dies.
Have gnu, will travel.
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