(Image: Augsburger Allgemeine)
Do you like to type out text messages on your phone while walking? That's fine, so as long as you don't get hit by a train. Tragically, that happened to a 15-year old girl in Augsburg, Germany. She died.
So the city of Augsburg took action. It installed traffic lights at train crossings on the ground, where they would fall into the peripheral vision of texters. The Daily Mail reports on this and other efforts around the world to prevent texting accidents:
Augsburg is not the only city introducing measures to make phone users more aware of their surroundings – or at least keeping them safe as well as others around them.
In 2014, the city of Chongqing experimented with a 165ft long pavement divided into lanes – with one for speedy and alert pedestrians and another for 'smombies,' meaning smartphone zombies.
Similarly, last year, Utah Valley University's Student Life and Wellness Centre (UVU) introduced a 'walking and texting' lane to a busy flight of stairs.
The idea started as a joke, although it could ensure that diligent students get to class on time and prevent accidents caused by people not looking where they are going.
The staircase was divided into three lanes, for walking, running and texting.
-via The Contemporist
Sure - some are daft, like the fad in the UK for having little dummy plugs to protect mains sockets from enquiring fingers.