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."

Comments

Helmet fires

[sjbe]

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.