The Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality this week installed the country’s first LED light strips at a pedestrian crossing.
LED strips that change colors at the same time as their eye-level counterparts were installed at the pavement’s edge. Connected to traffic lights system, the floor lighting is designed to warn pedestrians who walk without paying attention to their surroundings as they are texting, following their friends on social networks, or watching the latest cat-play-piano video clips on their smartphones.
The distracted “Smartphone Zombies,” or “Smombies” are a worldwide phenomenon, defined as walking persons using a cellphone who are oblivious to the world around them. Warning devices and signs such as the ones in Tel Aviv have been installed over the past few years in Europe, Singapore and Australia.
The LED lights located on either side of the intersection of Ibn G’virol and David Bloch Streets, opposite Rabin Square and the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality building, are part of a trial, and will be expanded throughout the city if deemed a success.