Slashdot Mirror
Chinese City Gets 'Smartphone Zombie' Walkway (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A city in northern China has introduced a special pedestrian lane on one of its roads, exclusively for slow-walking smartphone users, it's reported. According to the Shaanxi Online News, the pavement along the Yanta Road in Xi'an has now got itself a special lane for "phubbers" -- people who stare at their phones and ignore everything else around them. The lane is painted red, green and blue, and is 80cm wide and 100m long. Pictures of smartphones along the route distinguish it from an ordinary pedestrian lane. Shaanxi Online says that a large shopping mall, which looks onto the street, had been pushing to have the lane for a month. It says that cars often come onto the pavement, which is a busy channel for pedestrians who might not be paying attention to their surroundings. News website The Paper interviewed locals, who welcomed the introduction of the lane.
Wei Xiaowei said it was the first time he had seen such a thing and said he thought it was "pretty good." "Everybody walking along here thinks that it's very safe; at the side of the road, there are cars, and the vehicles also come onto here, and sometimes only just avoid you."
...to be alive! Sometimes I wonder if I'm living in a slightly rubbish cyberpunk novel!
before it's clogged with electric bikes and scooters, like a lot of sidewalks in China...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
if people can't be bothered to look where they're going and instead are staring at a screen, let nature take its course.
... and it leads to a meat grinder.
I tend to rant.
Bring! Back! The! Draft!
Mobilize! Prepare for the CAN-AM wars! We will be triTrumpant!
Announce that within 90 days, a new law will go into effect that does the following:
1. Releases drivers from any civil liability if they take reasonable steps to not hit a pedestrian who violates traffic laws as a result of being on a mobile device.
2. Makes distracted pedestrians liable for vehicle damage and any emotional trauma that is caused to a driver who hits them in compliance with point #1.
3. Allows for the felony prosecution of any distracted pedestrian who causes harm to drivers because they swerve to avoid them and collide with something.
There is a rich history of research into the design of pathways: Over 30 years experience in research, design, and construction of facilities for happier, healthier...
I used to read books while walking down the street. (on sidewalks) My attention and peripheral vision was more than sufficient that I never stepped over a curb or walked in front of traffic, but I still had people shout at me out of cars. Because I never jaywalked I know the real problem they had wasn't that I was unsafe but that I seemed unsafe. I think a lot of people are that way with people on cell phones. He's on a cell phone, is he going to walk in front of me? And they project their anxiety onto the other party where it does not belong. I'm responsible for my behavior. If I actually behave unsafely that's on me. Otherwise stop trying to regulate me.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Didn't we have this exact same fake news about a year ago? The next week everyone was backpedaling over how this wasn't actually happening.
My attention and peripheral vision was more than sufficient that I never stepped over a curb or walked in front of traffic, but I still had people shout at me out of cars.
What about the people around you who had to needlessly maneuver around you? I don't buy the argument that you were able to adequately pay attention to what was going on around you at all times.
I think a lot of people are that way with people on cell phones. He's on a cell phone, is he going to walk in front of me? And they project their anxiety onto the other party where it does not belong. I'm responsible for my behavior. If I actually behave unsafely that's on me. Otherwise stop trying to regulate me.
Your argument might have merit if people were actually good at paying attention to multiple things at once. It's called task saturation though I like the term pilots use which is "helmet fire". It is a FACT that people cannot talk on a phone and give their full attention to other tasks. It sounds simple enough but it actually task saturates most people and they start making mistakes unintentionally. The reason it is dangerous to talk on a cell phone and drive is that your brain physically cannot cope with doing both at the same time. Same thing applies to pedestrians. They literally cannot task switch between talking and navigating fast enough.
What happens when a walking phubber meets a driving phubber? Phubb phubb phubb.
Are you wise to trust strangers to not run over you? It's foolish if you ask me. (but you weren't asking me - yeah I know)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
#DeleteFacebook
It keeps the slowest traffic off to the side, and if you trip into somebody walking slowly because they're on their phone, they've got no excuse.
That's exactly what they did: they let nature take its course. But that involves people asking to make a dangerous thing safer. This let-nature-take-its-course strategy is why your have airbags in your car, random strangers who make your food sometimes occasionally get inspected, you have a DO NOT EAT warning on that packet of desiccant, and Windows users have a broad expectation that it's totally ok for them to run whatever malware it strikes their fancy to run as long as they have a virus scanner which can mostly delete it later. Apparently nature has humans in it! Stupid nature.
for the kill. Now the vehicle has the best path to follow for the most points clearly marked!
In soviet China, zombies phone you!
Instead of promoting this, add extra poles so people who aren't watching where they're going walk into them.. People should stop using the smartphone so much out in the public streets, have seen too many accidents already because people walked through red-lights while being busy with their smartphones (and I don't give a rat's ass if they die because of it, just don't be such a moron).
LOL! The next headline will be:
"Epidemic of Concussions and Smashed Phones Occurring at Yanta Road in Xi'an!"
OK, that's too long for a real headline, but you get the idea.