Chinese city gets 'smartphone zombie' walkway | Hacker News Reader

Chinese city gets 'smartphone zombie' walkway

bbc.com

123 pointstimoth53 comments

Reminds me of the led strips on the ground at pedestrian crossings in the Netherlands, added because of people not looking up at the light before crossing: https://dutchreview.com/news/dutch/smart-crossing-dutch-inve...

I wouldn't jump to any conclusions on that one yet. Both the statement that smartphone use is increasing the number of accidents and that this would be caused by people not looking at traffic lights are somewhat suspect.

Especially since I routinely see people simply crossing the street disregarding the traffic lights altogether regardless of smartphone use (here in Eindhoven at least).

I wonder if pavement lights would be beneficial in other ways, e.g. for training guide dogs you could have the red light to indicate stop and the absence of a light for go ahead. I think it would be useful for self-driving wheelchairs to detect floor lighting strips, too. Why not then have smartphones detect the lights as you're walking and looking at your phone, then they can vibrate to let you know something in the real world needs your attention.

I don't think this has gone beyond a few experiments in one municipality (certainly not anywhere I've been in the last year).

Can paste 低头族专用通道 into Google Image search if you'd like to see more photos of this one.

Thank you, made a clicky: https://www.google.com/search?q=%E4%BD%8E%E5%A4%B4%E6%97%8F%...

(translate.google.com for the phrase is also mildly amusing: "Lower family dedicated channel")

"低头族" is a phrase for smartphone addicts, can be translated to something like "a group of people who have their heads down." (Unfortunately Google is translating literally character-by-character instead.)

"Dedicated channel/passage" sounds about right though.

Speaking of literal translations, a direct English calque for that would be something like “downheadfolk”, or maybe “head-downers”.

“downheadfolk” sounds perfect, I hope people start using that :).

I actually think this is a great idea. Often in a crowd, I want to either stop and not be run into by people, or I'm rushing and people often obstruct and I have to dodge all of them to make on my way.

Having an actual place to chill out and walk slowly (cellphone or not) would help immensely.

I wish they would do this in San Francisco. Or just teach people to step to the curb when they aren't walking on the side"walk".

When I moved here from South Florida 10 years ago I noticed something very different about public customs in SF. People are inconsiderate when it comes to public spaces. In my hometown pedestrians will shoulder check you or pass aggressively close if you take up the sidewalk. It's just fucking rude to hog a public thoroughfare.

In SF people don't give a shit about others around them. They walk down a sidewalk, slowly, 3-4 wide. They stop right in the middle of the sidewalk and peck at their phone. They congregate across the sidewalk outside restaurants and stores. It's almost like a contagious passive-aggressive behavior you pick up after being here long enough.

I still pass people and invade their personal space if they're blocking the sidewalk. It's an innate aggressive behavior that I have to indulge. Hopefully some scooter-pedestrian collisions will fix this shitty behavior.

I think we're on the same side as you have a similar sentiment to mine, but I don't think what you're describing necessarily intentional. People just act differently in densely populated areas. I walk differently when I'm in DC or Singapore or Ohio.

One of the things is you get used to people being close in dense places in general. In fact, what you're describing might not even be interpreted as "aggressive" by the people you're walking close to in order to, I guess, communicate they're in the way. They may not even process it.

Wait for the scooters. But, of course, "To get the permits, each company has to demonstrate that it'll provide user education on wearing helmets and not riding on sidewalks, as well as best practices for safe scooter parking." I'm sure that will work.

I have the same problem when I visit Melbourne. One of the reasons I love living in Brisbane is that there’s less people, so less crowding on sidewalks. Death to all who “walk” (slower than a toddler who’s just learned the damned skill) 3/4-wide!

Oblivious != passive aggressive.

> I still pass people and invade their personal space if they're blocking the sidewalk.

Which, ironically, makes you the passive-aggressive one.

I don't live in the Bay Area, or in the US for that matter, but visited multiple times and the reason for this behavior is that people in the Bay Area are usually more relaxed than in other regions I've been to, like New York or other big and crowded cities, like Bucharest where I live.

IMO it's also "fucking rude" to "shoulder check or pass aggressively close".

I should be able to walk at my own pace and I don't freaking care that you're late somewhere. What can I say, leave earlier, take some other route or get a scooter. Not my problem and whenever I get "shoulder checked" I do get aggressive and I punched somebody once.

> I should be able to walk at my own pace

Yet, in doing so inconsiderately, you're denying others the right to do the exact same thing.

> I do get aggressive and I punched somebody once.

Ah, so the problem is you, thanks for confirming.

It doesn't work really well for car lanes, not sure if it would work any better for pedestrians... around here, the right lane is often the fastest lane but slow traffic is supposed to be in that lane. I think joggers and fast walkers would end up using it a lot.

I mean, are you just talking about exceptions or is it generally worse? If most slower cars take the right lane and most faster drivers take the left then it works generally better than if there were no such rule no? There will always be exceptions, but a little infrastructure can always help the typical situation.

far too common in my experience... some states have laws to try to prevent that, but in most places, they just ask you to do the right thing and it doesn't really work.

I believe Chongqing has these before Xi’an did. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/sep/15/chin... from 2014.

> It says that cars often come onto the pavement, which is a busy channel for pedestrians who might not be paying attention to their surroundings.

Uh, what? Cars come on to the...pavement? Do they mean the sidewalk? How is this supposed to work?

Cars park on the sidewalk and people walk in the street. Makes me laugh everytime I see it.

Found a picture on my phone. https://i.imgur.com/9BIjZmW.jpg

This is how things are done in China. Cars often come onto the sidewalk because all the parking spots on the street are taken.

Interesting, my guess as to why this doesn’t fly is the US is a mix of aggressive tow truck companies that prowl every downtown looking for cars to tow as they often get paid per car and the frequency of police that are all too happy to slap a $100-$300 fine on your windshield to help meet their monthly quota.

Either the reality of these two things or the successful perception of them is what would keep me from just rolling up on a sidewalk because I couldn’t find parking.

Does China not have fines and/or towing providing individual incentive to behave?

China doesn’t really have rule of law like the west does. Unless they are doing their once a year crackdown or it is a very important place, you won’t get a ticket or get towed.

Some cities are worse than others. Shanghai has much more enforcement than a lesser tier city like Beijing.

Most developing countries have a... loose notion of rule of law and following the rules. Even the ones with all-powerful dictatorships (China, Egypt), or relatively far along in their economic development/consolidation (Israel when I was growing up, Turkey).

There's a sort of critical mass you need to get people to follow rules like this, since enforcing them against an uncooperative majority requires impractical amounts of policing resources, whereas once most people are following the rules it's easy to deter the smaller number of rule-breakers. Similar to the concept of "tax morale".

In my corner of Shanghai there are also designated parking spots that can only be reached by driving onto the sidewalk first. There is usually enough space for a car to drive past parked cars and pedestrians at the same time (those sidewalks are wide), but you still need to pay a bit of attention to avoid getting honked at.

China has mechanical barriers on paid parking spots in some cities.

Believe me or not, even they don't deter a surprising amount of people who don't mind scratching their paint and getting few dimples on the hull (and those drive expensive cars.)

Very common in other countries, too. Particularly with motorcyles that drive on sidewalks to avoid street traffic or because it is inconvenient to make a legal turn onto a side rode, ala https://www.bangkokpost.com/media/content/20170127/c1_118802...

Pavement is what the sidewalk is called in British English.

In the US pavement would mean street, sidewalk, parking lot, anything that is not dirt more or less.

Yes. That is why I stipulated "British".

> Phubbing is a term coined as part of a campaign by Macquarie Dictionary to describe the habit of snubbing someone in favour of a mobile phone.

I've been using phombie in my head for quite some time now.

I think 'smombie'¹ is gradually catching on.

1: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/smombie

While I find it interesting from a safety/convenience perspective, I also can't help but see WALL-E becoming more and more real

Yeah

How hard it is to take your eyes of your phone to be a human being and pay attention to what matters?

I want an app that warns me when I'm about to hit something/someone. Autopilot for pedestrians.

You've been give a free 'app' to do just that, your eyes and a brain.

So what is the next? A dedicated lane for "texting drivers"? Come on. People. Stop this nonsense.

Eventually one of these walkways will have to cross a road. Do they have an alarm or something that alerts the phone users to actually look up before they cross?!

This is totally hilarious and actually a pretty damn good idea!

New York needs these...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VASywEuqFd8

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