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Normally when you need to wait at a crossing because it's red you take out your phone to waste some time. But you have to be quite anxious and look up if it's already green or not, otherwise you miss the green light.

But they help you out with that here in Korea by building in the traffic light into the curb. You're looking down on your phone and see the red line left and right of it. Once it changes to green you immediately are aware of it because it's in your field of view constantly.

Great invention!

I took the background picture just outside and put the stock picture hands with a phone on top of it so you can easier visualize it how it looks like in reality.

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[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 points 37 minutes ago

Do crosswalks literally have marks on the ground now for people who don't look up from their phones?

[–] agent_nycto@lemmy.world 5 points 5 hours ago

This just makes me sad.

[–] Jumi@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago

The last thing I want to focus my attention on when I'm in traffic is my phone screen.

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 5 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Everyone needs to be dropped in a place with no internet for 6 months.

Problem solved.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 points 34 minutes ago* (last edited 32 minutes ago) (1 children)

Drop them there with shovels tho, cuz there will be a lot of dead bodies of people who starved when they couldn't order food. Actually the shovels would only be necessarily for a short time, as a ton of them would be left lying around next to the bodies.

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 1 points 4 minutes ago (1 children)

Hah, fair point. How about "Dropped in a place with a functional society and no internet, that, yea, magically exists somewhere."?

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 points 1 minute ago

In that case I would take my modern device with me that's loaded up with gigabytes of music from the last hundred years, and amaze some king or queen with my magic.

[–] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 10 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Says the guy with 1386 comments on his own instance of a fringe social media software :D

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 1 points 42 minutes ago

Yup, that's me. But I also put it away regularly to experience everything else the world has to offer. Sometimes for pretty extended periods of time, too. And you know, not walk out into traffic.

[–] RisingSwell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Do your crossings not make noise? When ours (south Australia) is ready to cross it's very noisy and obvious

[–] colourlessidea@sopuli.xyz 6 points 9 hours ago

Fun fact that you probably know: the background ‘ticking’ in the chorus of Bad Guy by Billie Eilish is the sound made by traffic lights in Sydney

[–] Usernameblankface@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago

I like to look around at the cars going by, examine the infrastructure around the intersection like the nerd I am, and when the countdown starts (the crosswalk signals usually have a countdown until they switch to "GO") I'm looking back and forth between the signal and traffic to see who's stopping and who's trying to beat the light.

I'm not about to trust my life to a signal when so many drivers are too busy on their phones to notice the big lights in front of them shining a different color than it did a second ago.

[–] tauren@lemm.ee 59 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Normally when you need to wait at a crossing because it’s red you take out your phone to waste some time.

Is that considered normal these days? Jesus.

[–] XaetaCore@lemmy.xaetacore.net 2 points 10 hours ago

Exactly my thought, Cant people be without their phones for one second 😅

[–] Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 6 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

Are you just raw dogging walking in public no phone nothing??

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago

It's in my pocket, but I don't trust cars. Been hit too many times for that. It's only happened once while being a pedestrian, but that was enough for me, thanks.

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

Sometimes you may have to wait for thirty or forty seconds. You could literally die several times!

[–] XaetaCore@lemmy.xaetacore.net 1 points 10 hours ago

Usually just music, does that count?

[–] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I don't know where you live, but here in Seoul nobody takes out their phone out at the traffic light because most of the people have it already in the hand while walking.

See this random video I just googled of a crosswalk in Gangnam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeadHl7ugmk

[–] shifty@leminal.space 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yup, everybody looking down at their pocket computers and fucking up their posture.

[–] XaetaCore@lemmy.xaetacore.net 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

If you hold your phone in front of you you get bonus arm training

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

And impact protection.

[–] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 5 points 1 day ago

It seems it's not just in Asia, random London video shows also half of the people walking with phone in the hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTxyohQ8jN0&t=11

( Other commenter commented thesame about Tokyo.l

[–] rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world 79 points 1 day ago (4 children)

People really take their phones out to waste time waiting for the lights to change? How long does it take for the lights to change? It's like, maybe a minute absolute maximum where I'm from -- does it take longer where you are?

[–] i_dont_want_to@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 15 hours ago

In my city, some intersections you would wait maybe more than 5 minutes for the light to change if you're not downtown. Then again, I wasn't on my phone for this wait. Annoyingly, these pedestrian signals didn't have any sound when they changed, where downtown did.

Downtown wasn't so bad, though. You might still wait longer than a minute, but usually not.

Dude people are fucked. When people die in round based online games they instantly go on their phones now until the next round. Even in games that require post death teamwork and comms. I have seen the stop light thing too, even for a 20s stop. Absolutely zero ability to just do nothing for a couple seconds and look up at the real world.

[–] shifty@leminal.space 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Tokyo is full of meanderthals walking and biking while looking down at their phones. Standing still while waiting for the lights to change is tame.

There's even a word for it here: aruki-sumaho

Notable sightings so far in 2025:

  • A pack of middle school boys all playing a mobile game while walking with their faces in their phones and blocking the sidewalk. Three abreast in marching band formation, maybe 15 of them.

  • Salaryman holding a laptop and on a conference call while rushing towards a train station.

  • A few face-in-tablet while walking, that always gets a smirk out of me.

  • Lady in heels, approaching the upward stairs while watching a video on her phone in landscape mode, arm fully extended and airpods in. Misses a step and eats it, goes full scorpion. I was impressed she managed to hold onto her phone and keep all her teeth, she just missed chomping on a concrete step by a few cm.

Its extremely common here. Enough that I usually have to stop walking on the sidewalk and just wait for them to notice me to look up and move out of the way, you can't always side step them because they're frequently not walking straight and they'll wander across the path anyway, hence the term meanderthals.

(Edited for grammar/spelling/links)

[–] LogicalDrivel@sopuli.xyz 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

meanderthals

Im stealing this.

[–] shifty@leminal.space 4 points 1 day ago

please do. I stole the term myself from the japanlife subreddit.

The most dangerous part of living in Tokyo isn't the typhoons, earthquakes, or tsunamis these days, its the mothers on electric assist e-bikes 'mama-chari' mid-afternoon on their way back with the whole family.

Toddler in the front, middle schooler on the back, she has pedal assist and is booking it on the sidewalk while looking at her smartphone because its legally permissible to ride with the pedestrians when you feel unsafe on the streets. The bike lanes here aren't separated from traffic. And the bike lanes here are de-facto 15-minute loading parking spaces for the massive trucks, drop off points for taxis, and uber eats scooter parking spots. So you either have to merge into traffic due to all the parked vehicles, or ride on the sidewalk.

If you ever come to Toyko, walk on the left and look over your right shoulder so you don't get run over by a whole family on a modern day chariot.

[–] ddash@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 day ago

In huge cities there are crossings where it definitely could take longer. But for 99% of crossings otherwise, yeah, not that long that you'd need to check your phone. Its the tines we are in I guess.

[–] Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Finland had a solution for this long before smartphones even existed. Pedestrian traffic lights here play different tones depending on whether it’s red or green, allowing blind or visually impaired people to safely navigate the city.

[–] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, bringing more accessibility is very good even if it is quite annoying if you live nearby I guess.

[–] TDCN@feddit.dk 6 points 1 day ago

In Scandinavia the boxes have microphones and listens to the ambient sound and lowered and raises its sound accordingly. Some even detect humans around it so if noone are around they turn barely audible. Really nice design.

[–] ZDL@ttrpg.network 21 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Weird. I just pay attention to my surroundings myself.

[–] real_squids@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Those are just as much of your surroundings as regular lights though

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[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Some "smart" systems extend to car and bicycle users too.

[–] cybersin@lemm.ee 12 points 1 day ago (4 children)

It's a neat idea, but looking down at your phone is probably not a great idea when standing so close to a busy road.

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[–] Endmaker@ani.social 11 points 1 day ago
[–] eatham@aussie.zone 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In your country there isn't a sound for when you can cross?

[–] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Sadly no. Actually there is a button sometimes, but I couldn't figure what it is for. It's not for blind people because it doesn't make a sound.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

What do the visually impaired do?

[–] i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk 7 points 1 day ago

That's pretty neat. It annoys me here that newer crossings tend not to have the beep, and the lights are on a post on the same side - which would be fine but you can't always look at the light and the road, so sometimes it goes green and I don't notice. Having them on the road threshold would make it a bit more obvious I think, even if you're not on a phone.

[–] real_squids@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I bet it works well for when the sun is in your eyes, too.

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[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

During those rare moments you're outside, it's called the "ground."

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