Germans stick traffic lights in pavements for addicts who can't take their eyes off phones The German city of Augsburg is embedding warning lights in the pavement at traffic intersections to alert smartphone users who don't looking up before crossing the road. Rows of red LEDs have been embedded in the pavement after a 15-year-old girl was killed when she stepped in front of a tram while looking at her smartphone …
You think humans are dumb now, imagine if for the past several million years, homo sapiens and their evolutionary predecessors were protected from nasty beasts like sabre toothed tigers and dire wolves via the intervention of friendly aliens so we didn't have to be aware of our surroundings.
Hold on, maybe that actually happened...it would explain people walking in front of trains while texting...
"Hold on, maybe that actually happened...it would explain people walking in front of trains while texting..."
In my home town some people set up their folding chairs and blankets on the rail road tracks to watch a fireworks display. The next edition of the newspaper had their outraged letters. A train came along! They could have been killed! Someone should be held responsible!
I think there is a group of people that are literally too stupid to live.
I wish they were too stupid to breed - I blame porn for that: it's a step-by-step guide for halfwits.
Forget nuclear secrets - lets keep the secrets of procreation from the unworthy.
God - I'm rambling, aren't I?
Oh, well, off to pornhub.
<quote>I think there is a group of people that are literally too stupid to live.</quote>
If you were to look at their medical records, you would realize one very important fact: they have shit for brains.
This condition is known in medical literature as Terminal Stupidity.
Most manglers suffer from this disease.
Offer an inducement for sterilization, choosing the inducement such that idiots will take it up enthusiastically while non-idiots won't be particularly tempted --- maybe free legal crack for life would be one of the options? Or free phone company subscriptions?
Oh, but they're good.
Best I saw was in Maastricht. Girl on bike using her phone. Lack of concentration meant she missed the kerb / cobbles change, the front wheel stopped and she went clean over the handlebars.
Bounced a few times on the cobbles, rolled out and was still talking on the phone when she got up.
My view is that the only change we need to solve the problem is a new Coroner's verdict: "Suicide while the balance of their mind was somewhere else.".
I think it was only today on another topic that someone mentioned "The Marching Morons". Do note the reference to 'lemmings' and the 'solution'.
Yeah, I amongst others have referred to that story a few times in these comments sections. It should be required reading in all schools and the teacher forced at gunpoint if necessary to explain it to their students in minute detail. With an exam afterwards to make sure the lesson has gone in.
Then we issue free bumper packs of condoms to all the students.
That's going to cost to install city-wide
I would not be so sure. LEDs are pretty easy to install and retrofit. It can be rolled out along with resurfacing and general improvements to sidewalks to minimize costs as well. In any case, the usefulness of this one is "to be determined".
If we copy a LED application, I'd rather have us copy the Eastern European approach. They recently started augmenting standard traffic lights for cars with matching LED strips on the gantries. Highly visible, cheap, reliable, easy to install and a big improvement on overall road safety.
To be fair to the previous poster, they *may* be well-versed in the various different types of CVD, and were specifically thinking about the small percentage of CVD people who genuinely do have no colour vision at all, rather than the far larger percentage who merely suffer from some degree of deficiency.
Or, as is more likely the case, maybe they're simply part of that surprisingly large group of non-CVD people who really do believe that colour "blindness" is a binary condition rather than the far more complex spectrum it actually is.
Like you, I don't have any difficulty with things like traffic lights that some people automatically assume I'd struggle with as soon as they find out I'm red-green deficient. My favourite example of where I really do struggle comes courtesy of our Samsung fridge freezer, which has a built in water/ice dispenser and accompanying filter cartridge. On the door there's a small LCD to show the temperatures, dispenser settings etc., and also whether or not the filter needs replacing. Most of the LCD consists of blue on black characters/symbols, however when the filter has expired the symbol for the filter changes to red. Being merely red-green deficient as opposed to completely unable to see red, this isn't the problem.
What *is* the problem is that, in the weeks leading up to the expiry of the filter, the symbol first changes colour from blue to purple (I'm assuming here that Samsung decided not to splash out on a different backlight LED here, and are simply driving both the blue and red ones). However, the only reason I know it changes to purple is because my wife asked me one day what the purple light on the fridge meant - to my CVD-afflicted eyes there's no discernable difference in shade between this symbol when it switches between blue and purple, even though the shade of red used is, on its own, quite distinct.
In order to comply with disability legislation, you need to cover the worst plausible case.
Color deficiency is indeed a sliding scale, from 2 macadam problems up to a total lack of one or all types of cone.
While full colour blindness is rare, it does exist and must be allowed for by public design. You can't make it impossible for someone to drive just because they can't distinguish the colours.
I'm glad that two of you just decided to assume I'm an idiot rather than read the actual words I used, or pay attention to the relevant legislation.
I had rather expected better here. Truly, DevOps melts your brain.
May I suggest a lower cost solution. It's what I thought the article's title meant when I first read it.
In future put all traffic lights, street lights, litter bins, park benches in the middle of the pavement (USA etc - sidewalk). That will at least educate a lot of the ipodestrians.
Installing lights at ground level is far too simple a solution for use here in the UK.
Instead The Powers That Be would commission a complex, multi-million pound project to develop technology that would make vehicles take avoiding action when a distracted phone user steps into their path.
The project would naturally be outsourced to a minister's friend suitably experienced consultant, get delivered five years late, be extremely over-budget, and be incompatible with any phone or vehicle in use at that date.
"Installing lights at ground level is far too simple a solution for use here in the UK."
I see what you are getting at here.. But in the UK such a technical solution isn't simple. Procurement rules and interference by politically elected leaders will ensure that the choice will be a totally unsuitable product that will never work as intended.
So it's more a matter of which misguided and mismanaged solution will eventually be picked. I vote for the cheapest one, which would be to do nothing. Besides, do give Darwin a chance at least.
Is a better solution in place already in the UK? I thought every single crossing had been dug up and fitted with dimples and drop-kerbs to indicate a crossing. Which, unlike LEDs, also work for visually impaired folk and considerably easier/cheaper to maintain.
Still a complete waste of money, but it's already been done.
Maybe just replace the LEDs with a BOFH style cattle prod (lengthways of course)? Step near it when you shouldn't be crossing and get a zap?
Also fit a variant across the road too, so muppet drivers who jump the red lights (especially at crossings) get a similar jolt? Could be tricky to deal with the insulating properties of car tyres I guess, so maybe a higher voltage or a set of stinger spikes too?
All they need are cartoony brochures showing how not be killed in an intersection.
It worked in Russia for the "how not to take selfies," didn't it?
Or, maybe they need an app that tells you when you're about to be creamed by a vehicular merchant of death - I'm sure it would be popular once they work out the bugs.
It always struck me that the pedestrian lights were hard for the visually impaired to spot and decipher. Yes, I know there are audio signals, but at a busy junction they're difficult to hear.
Also, whether smart phone-impaired or not, you always look at where you put your feet, so ground level is not a bad place for flashing red.
Costly? Maybe. But you'd only bother at busy junctions. And injured humans are very expensive to fix.
"It always struck me that the pedestrian lights were hard for the visually impaired to spot and decipher. Yes, I know there are audio signals, but at a busy junction they're difficult to hear."
Yes, that can be an issue for some types of disability. What you should be outraged at is not just the lack of thought and care put into making life better for the disabled, but the waste of money spent "protecting" those who intentionally and wilfully temporarily "disable" themselves by being inconsiderate self absorbed utter twats.
My client was unable to see the warning because {{DUMB EXCUSE}} and is suing for negligence ...
My client was actively considering ending it all but was distracted by the blinkenlights while browsing ways ... breach of human rights ...
My clients are concerned that this "facility" is distracting our product from interacting fully with our targeted programme of relevant ads ... Our partner funeral homes are concerned that the their research into providing potential clients with the easiest possible life exit strategies is being negatively impacted ... to the detriment of the negative life chances of ... and the human rights of our potential product ...
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