Footpath Traffic Lights To Curb Walking-Into-Traffic-‘Cos-Of-Insta Epidemic

It’s pretty fucking amazing to live in a time when you can carry a device in the palm of your hand that lets you access everyone you know and most of the things humanity knows and also pictures of pigs who are best friends with monkeys – anyone who argues against that is an idiot. 

Unfortunately one of the side effects of this is that looking at your phone is pretty much way more interesting than looking anywhere else – which includes in front of you when you’re walking.
Augsburg in Germany is trialling a solution the problem of “smombies” (smartphone zombies) walking into traffic by installing footpath traffic lights that are visible even when you’re looking down at your phone, which seems like a way better solution than just saying “people look at their phones too much” before telling kids to get off your lawn.
The lights flash if there’s a tram coming and go red if the road ahead is not clear to walk, which hopefully people will to learn notice in the their peripherals before they die looking at a dumb meme someone retweeted.
There’s a video showing how they work and also a bit of discussion about whether they’re good or not, which will only make sense if you speak German:

Fingers crossed that the tech makes its way over here if successful, because I personally love content and hate being run over by cars.
Source: Mashable.
Photo: YouTube.

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