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.
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.