The word "smombie" is one of the most recent additions to the German language. Last November, the term – a mashup of "smartphone" and "zombie", referring to oblivious smartphone users staggering around cities like the undead – was voted Youth Word of the Year in Germany.
The disease is virulent. A recent study of 14,000 pedestrians in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rome and Stockholm found that 17% of people used their smartphone while walking. The heaviest users were 25 to 35-year-olds: almost a quarter of them exhibited smombie-esque behaviour.
Now Augsburg, a municipality outside Munich, has braced itself for this new public peril. After several smombies caused accidents by carelessly crossing tram tracks, city officials decided to install new traffic lights – at ground level.
In Munich, where a 15-year-old girl wearing headphones was recently killed by a tram, certain particularly dangerous crossings were fitted with special beacons that send warnings to smartphones enabled with a corresponding app, called Watch Out!
In the US, meanwhile, cities such as Portland, Seattle and Cleveland have experimented with talking buses that alert pedestrians during turns. Rexburg, Idaho has even imposed fines of $50 for texting while walking.
And a theme park in the Chinese city of Chongqing has experimented with a special "phone lane" for pedestrians, itself based on an earlier experiment in Washington, DC.
"This is not just about smartphones. The crossing here is so busy and dangerous that we are used to the screeching noise of the tram's emergency breaks," says Sebastian Hrabak, owner of the restaurant Schwarze Kiste at Haunstetterstraße station. "But since the lights were installed last week, there hasn't been a single dangerous incident."
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