Dedicated temporary "text walking lanes" can now be used by people lost in their phones so they don't collide with pedestrians while walking the streets of Belgian City, Antwerp, BBC.com reports.
This initiative - or others say, publicity stunt - is by Mlab, a smartphone labortatory based in the city.
It claims that "text walking" collisions can be attributed to the increase of mobile phone breakages.
Mobile operators have released figures of the number of mobile phones compared to the world population. According to the US Census Bureau, there are 7.5 billion mobiles in the world and estimated 7.2 billion population, showing that there are more mobile phones in this world than people.
"You probably walk through the streets while texting or sending Whatsapp messages to your friends and don't really pay attention to your surroundings - only to whatever is happening on your screen," a spokesman for Mlab, a smart phone laboratory based in Antwerp, was quoted by Yahoo News as saying.
"This causes collisions with poles or other pedestrians. You could, unknowingly, even be endangering your own life while you 'textwalk' when you cross the street without looking up."
To address this problem, the "text walking lanes" were initiated, so phone users have their own track and they don't cause stress to disgruntled pedestrians that have to dodge them. There are already similar lanes like this in Washington, DC and Chongqing in China.
According to the U.S. ER data, the number of pedestrian injuries attributed to handset distractions increased by 35 percent in the last five years, Research firm Pew said in a report by Foxnews.com.
States of Utah and New Jersey, in an effort to bring down the number of accidents linked to distracted street walking, have experimented charging fines to wandering texters who put themselves in hazardous situations. Furthermore, New York City have since reduced their speed limits last year as a form of safety measure. The move should mean that if a smartphone user does wander into the street without realizing, the driver will be able to steer clear off their direction instead of mowing them down.
