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From Poles to Pavement: Grounded Traffic Lights
There’s a lot of concern around texting and driving, but what about texting and walking? According to the Wall Street Journal, emergency room visits by cellphone-using pedestrians were up 124% in 2014 from 2010.
The rising number of incidents involving mobile devices and pedestrians has led city planners in two European cities to install traffic lights in the ground. Since traffic lights and cars aren’t in the line of site of a person whose neck is stuck looking down at their phone when walking, the towns of Bodegraven (Netherlands) and Augsburg (Germany) have installed light strips that are synchronized with traffic lights.
These innovations are paving the way (pun intended) for the different considerations that architects, city planners, developers, and the like have to take into consideration when designing for a technology-saturated future.
For comments, questions or concerns, please contact Daniella Soloway
