When you’re trying to get somewhere on foot, few things are more irritating than getting stuck behind someone whose eyes are glued to Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, and who’s consequently walking at negative six miles per hour.
The Chinese city of Chongqing has a nifty solution to the problem, Engadget reports. Pedestrians on Foreigner Street recently noticed the sidewalk was painted with white lines, dividing it in two: one lane for normal humans walking at normal human speeds, and the other for cyborgs people who insist on using their smartphones while they walk.
The lanes will ideally help save regular walkers from smartphone users’ ultra-slow pace, as well as from collisions caused by smartphone users who aren’t looking where they’re going.
This isn’t the first time a sidewalk has played host to a special lane for smarthpone users; National Geographic, as Engadget notes, did a similar thing in Washington, D.C. back in July for an episode of Mind Over Masses. For that experiment, the D.C. sidewalk featured one lane marked “NO CELLPHONES,” and another lane marked “CELLPHONES: WALK IN THIS LANE AT YOUR OWN RISK.”
On one hand, the lanes sound like they’ll improve the flow of traffic on city sidewalk. On the other hand, now we know where smartphone thieves might be most likely to congregate.
