German city installs traffic lights in sidewalks, much to the delight of distracted smartphone users

[‘Hello, the traffic lights are up here’/The Verge]

Smartphones have become so ubiquitous that, often, users seem more focused on their screens than in the actual real world around them.

That realization is a reason why the German city of Augsburg has decided to embed traffic lights into several of its sidewalks.

Their goal? To grab the attention of distracted smartphone users staring down at their devices, reports The Washington Post.

The project launched after city officials began noticing that pedestrians had started to ignore traffic lights - in favour of their phones.

The problem became so bad Germans even started using a specific name for these distracted pedestrians, ‘Smombie‘, combining the words zombie and smartphone.

The last straw for kicking off the new sidewalk light project, however, was after a tram hit a 15-year-old girl. An Augsburg police report determined that the young woman had been distracted by her cellphone while listening to music, with her headphones on, as she was making her way across the tracks.

Local media reported that some locals think the new sidewalk lights are a waste of taxpayer money, but there is some data to support the new program’s usefulness.

A survey conducted across several European capitals found that 17 per cent of pedestrians used their smartphones in high traffic areas.

Furthermore, the study found that younger demographics were also much more likely to become distracted by their smartphones than older age groups as well.