The task of crossing the road isn’t ordinarily a difficult one, but introduce addictive mobile phones and you’ll have people crashing into other pedestrians, but more dangerously, they may wander out onto the road into the path of cars.
The problem with traditional crossing lights is that they’re positioned high and when we had nothing else to look at, that was a perfectly logical place to have them. Fast forward to 2017 and its possible we need to rethink how we indicate to pedestrians that its safe to cross an intersection.
Eagle-eyed Melbournite, Michael Soutar captured this intersection in Melbourne that looks to have the right solution. There’s embedded lights in the pavement which would catch the attention of anyone who has their head down, texting, emailing or on flicking through social media.
The lights flash in colour sequence with the traditional crossing lights. While it would be expensive to retrofit intersections with these electronics, anywhere new should consider this as an option.
