Normally when you need to wait at a crossing because it’s red you take out your phone to waste some time. But you have to be quite anxious and look up if it’s already green or not, otherwise you miss the green light.
But they help you out with that here in Korea by building in the traffic light into the curb. You’re looking down on your phone and see the red line left and right of it. Once it changes to green you immediately are aware of it because it’s in your field of view constantly.
Great invention!
I took the background picture just outside and put the stock picture hands with a phone on top of it so you can easier visualize it how it looks like in reality.
Some “smart” systems extend to car and bicycle users too.
Normally when you need to wait at a crossing because it’s red you take out your phone to waste some time.
Is that considered normal these days? Jesus.
I don’t know where you live, but here in Seoul nobody takes out their phone out at the traffic light because most of the people have it already in the hand while walking.
See this random video I just googled of a crosswalk in Gangnam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeadHl7ugmk
Yup, everybody looking down at their pocket computers and fucking up their posture.
If you hold your phone in front of you you get bonus arm training
And impact protection.
It seems it’s not just in Asia, random London video shows also half of the people walking with phone in the hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTxyohQ8jN0&t=11
( Other commenter commented thesame about Tokyo.l
Yeah, that’s a problem.
Exactly my thought, Cant people be without their phones for one second 😅
Are you just raw dogging walking in public no phone nothing??
Usually just music, does that count?
It’s in my pocket, but I don’t trust cars. Been hit too many times for that. It’s only happened once while being a pedestrian, but that was enough for me, thanks.
Sometimes you may have to wait for thirty or forty seconds. You could literally die several times!
I’m glad I seem to be not the only one to be disgusted by the concept. Like, wtf? If you are addicted to the phone so much that for the couple dozen of seconds you wait, a ground light is “helpful” for you, you belong to psychiatry/addictoligy department of your nearest hospital. Jesus fucking christ.
Very elitist of you to know so much about other peoples psyche.
Yes. That’s exactly what “elitism” means. 🙄
During those rare moments you’re outside, it’s called the “ground.”
Everyone needs to be dropped in a place with no internet for 6 months.
Problem solved.
Says the guy with 1386 comments on his own instance of a fringe social media software :D
Yup, that’s me. But I also put it away regularly to experience everything else the world has to offer. Sometimes for pretty extended periods of time, too. And you know, not walk out into traffic.
Drop them there with shovels tho, cuz there will be a lot of dead bodies of people who starved when they couldn’t order food. Actually the shovels would only be necessarily for a short time, as a ton of them would be left lying around next to the bodies.
Hah, fair point. How about “Dropped in a place with a functional society and no internet, that, yea, magically exists somewhere.”?
In that case I would take my modern device with me that’s loaded up with gigabytes of music from the last hundred years, and amaze some king or queen with my magic.
Someone’s been reading comments on the zapped back in time post.
It’s a neat idea, but looking down at your phone is probably not a great idea when standing so close to a busy road.
what else is there to do? be bored for a couple minutes?
Yes.
I dunno, think about something. There must be something worth thinking about in your life. Or is it only cheap, meaningless dopamine you get from staring at your phone?
You know, prior to having computers in our pockets etc, people used to be able to do nothing for long periods of time prior to becoming bored.
I don’t think a lot of kids really know what it is to be bored. I think they mean their addiction is pining and they want a fix.
Do your crossings not make noise? When ours (south Australia) is ready to cross it’s very noisy and obvious
Fun fact that you probably know: the background ‘ticking’ in the chorus of Bad Guy by Billie Eilish is the sound made by traffic lights in Sydney
I did not know that. That’s pretty neat; thank you for sharing!
Peeeeeeeewdududududududududududuh
I use to live next to a silent crossing and it threw me every time, despite crossing it twice every week day for years
Nppe
That’s pretty neat. It annoys me here that newer crossings tend not to have the beep, and the lights are on a post on the same side - which would be fine but you can’t always look at the light and the road, so sometimes it goes green and I don’t notice. Having them on the road threshold would make it a bit more obvious I think, even if you’re not on a phone.
My city installed it on some crossing, it’s pretty nice looking as well.
I bet it works well for when the sun is in your eyes, too.
Intense sunlight could make it hard to see the lights on the ground, no?
Do crosswalks literally have marks on the ground now for people who don’t look up from their phones?
The last thing I want to focus my attention on when I’m in traffic is my phone screen.
Finland had a solution for this long before smartphones even existed. Pedestrian traffic lights here play different tones depending on whether it’s red or green, allowing blind or visually impaired people to safely navigate the city.
Yeah, bringing more accessibility is very good even if it is quite annoying if you live nearby I guess.
In Scandinavia the boxes have microphones and listens to the ambient sound and lowered and raises its sound accordingly. Some even detect humans around it so if noone are around they turn barely audible. Really nice design.
And one city (Pori) has fricking LASERS projecting a red line on the path when the light is red
Everyone is boomering about the damn kids these days and their phones, but this seems like a cool extra bit accessibility that happens to help people on their phones.
