Pedestrians glued to their smartphones were given something else to look at this week in Seoul, as officials launched a safety campaign to keep them from walking into busy traffic.
Smartphone-related collisions between pedestrians and vehicles in South Korea have more than doubled in five years to about 1,000 reported incidents in 2014, according to the South Korean Transportation Safety Authority.
The problem is especially acute in a nation where smartphone penetration currently stands at about 80 percent of the population, most of whom seem intent on mastering the art of walking and texting.
Photo: AFP
In a bid to reduce the number of people either stepping carelessly into oncoming traffic or slamming into each other on the sidewalk, officials in Seoul — one of the world’s most wired cities — have begun installing the first batch of 300 warning signs this week in five locations across the capital.
“We picked locations with the highest number of young pedestrians since the majority of smartphone users are in their teens to their 30s,” Kim Ooc-kyeong, a Seoul city official in charge of the project, told reporters yesterday.
Some signs are attached to traffic light poles and depict a person looking at his smartphone as he is about to be hit by a car.
However, given that the target audience are people who would not look up from their screens to see such warnings, other signs have been plastered on the actual sidewalk.
“We put 250 signs on the pavements because they will actually be seen by the pedestrians that are looking down at their smartphones,” Kim said.
However, neither type of warning seemed to have registered with locals interviewed at lunchtime by reporters.
“I’m always on my smartphone, and I’ve never seen the signs before,” said Kim Hyun-chul, 29. “They need to make them stand out more.”
Koo Sung-hoi, 27, was also unaware of the efforts to keep him from a smartphone-related injury.
“I think the signs on the pavements are too small to be noticed,” Koo said.
Seoul plans to monitor the effectiveness of the signs until the end of the year before deciding whether to expand the project.
Similar campaigns have already been tried in Europe.
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