Tel Aviv deploys zombie lights for mobile-obsessed walkers
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL -- Tel Aviv has taken its first steps toward assisting pedestrians distracted by their smartphones by embedding LED stoplights at crosswalks.
The municipality installed the "zombie traffic lights" Monday aiming to minimize accidents between vehicles and inattentive pedestrians at crosswalks.
Tomer Dror, head of Traffic Management Division at the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality, says the aim is to reduce accidents caused by "pedestrians that are focused too much on the smartphone, and less on the traffic around them."
Dror says the idea is to "put the road into their eyes."
Similar systems have already been used in Australia, Singapore and the Netherlands.
For now, the pilot program is limited to a single intersection in central Tel Aviv, but the municipality says it will expand the zombie lights if it proves effective.
