This is the world we live in.
The Chinese city of Chongqing officially has a marked pedestrian lane for people who can’t stop texting and tweeting long enough to walk along the street.
“There are lots of elderly people and children in our street, and walking with your cellphone may cause unnecessary collisions here,” Nong Cheng, the marketing official with Meixin Group, told the Associated Press. The Meixin Group manages the area in the city’s entertainment zone.
Meixin has marked a 165-foot stretch of pavement with two pedestrian lanes. One prohibits cellphone use and one that allows pedestrians to use them at their “own risk.”
“Those using their cellphones of course have not heeded the markings on the pavement,” she said. “They don’t notice them.”
But she said the lane is intended to also be a bit ridiculous and over-the-top. She hopes it will bring awareness to the growing safety problem stemming from texting while walking.
A recent study from Stony Brook University showed that when people use their cell phones while walking, they are 61 percent more likely to veer off course and 13 percent more likely to overshoot their target. Experts estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of all pedestrian accidents that land someone in the hospital are the result of walking and texting.
Nong told the Associated Press that idea for the separate lanes came from a similar stretch of pavement in Washington D.C. created by National Geographic Television in July as part of a behavior experiment.
