Smartphone enthusiasts can now walk along the streets in China without bothering to look up from their devices. The Chinese city of Chongqing have given phone addicts their own lane on the pavement to keep their heads-down approach to walking separated from those who still enjoy reality. The concept was initiated due to the number of people bumping into each other on the pavements.
Apparently though, the attempt at keeping those unable to become detached from their smart devices away from normal people has backfired on the city’s government. Now the phone warriors have spotted the special pathway and spend most of their time taking selfies with the lane in the background. Also many users of the new lane also drift into the normal lane as they forget to look up. The experiment was encouraged by a similar project in Washington DC. This also went wrong as pedestrians couldn’t be bothered to look up from their phones for long enough to see their special lane.
“Phone zombies” as they have been affectionately nicknamed, are involved in an increasingly worrying amount of traffic accidents, including one Taiwanese woman who was killed while walking onto a busy high street without looking away from her device.
Phones are not only damaging social appetite for real conversing, it would appear they are also now a very real threat to health.