Really -Wouldn't you think that people would care about crossing the street safely over who sent you a text?
We shake our heads.
Article:
Few nations in the world take red traffic lights more seriously than Germany.
Foreign visitors frequently wonder why crowds of Germans wait for traffic lights to turn green when there are no cars in sight.
That is why officials
in the city of Augsburg became concerned when they noticed a new
phenomenon: Pedestrians were so busy looking at their smartphones that
they were ignoring traffic lights.
The city has attempted
to solve that problem by installing new traffic lights embedded in the
pavement — so that pedestrians constantly looking down at their phones
won't miss them.
"It creates a whole new level of attention," city spokeswoman Stephanie Lermen was quoted
as saying. Lermen thinks the money is wisely spent: A recent survey conducted
in
several European cities, including Berlin, found that almost 20 percent
of pedestrians were distracted by their smartphones. Younger people are
most likely to risk their safety for a quick look at their Facebook
profiles or WhatsApp messages, the survey
found.
That problem may be even more widespread in the United States: 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. The Department of
Transportation has
established a clear connection between such habits and an increase in pedestrian deaths.
According to the German
newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, not everyone thinks the new lights are a
good idea. Some commentators have complained that the project was a
waste of taxpayers' money.
 |
| (Thomas Hosemann/Stadtwerke Augsburg) |
"Until now, I didn't even notice them," one young pedestrian told the local Augsburger
Allgemeine newspaper after reporters made him aware of the lights.
But city officials say
their work is justified: The idea 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.
Augsburg is not the only city that has been forced to react to an increasing number of smartphone-obsessed pedestrians.
In 2014, the Chinese city of Chongqing made headlines
when it experimented with a 165-foot stretch of pavement
where pedestrians had to choose between walking on a normal lane and
one reserved for smombies -- a portmanteau of "smartphone" and
"zombies" used to describe people walking and staring at their devices.
"There are lots of
elderly people and children in our street, and walking with your
cellphone may cause unnecessary collisions here," marketing official
Nong Cheng told the Associated Press at that time.
