CULTURE

Utah University Adds Texting and Walking Lane to Its Stairs

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Phone carriers and local emergency rooms rejoice. Students at Utah Valley University have a new perk: a texting and walking lane.
A stairway in the campus life and wellness center in Orem, Utah, has been divided into three lanes: walking, running and texting. It’s like the high-occupancy lane on the highway, but it’s you and your device so connected that you can’t take a second to part ways between classes.
Yes, it has come to this, well, sort of. It actually started as a bit of a laughing matter, according to a university report. The report quoted the university’s creative director, Matt Bambrough, as saying that the original intention of creating the new design was to let students know “we are aware of who they are and where they’re coming from. The design was meant for people to laugh at rather than a real attempt to direct traffic flow.”
But he also said: “When you have 18-to 24-year-olds walking on campus glued to their smartphones, you’re almost bound to run into someone somewhere.”
As the saying goes, there’s a grain of truth in every joke, and, buoyed by its resonance, the texting-lane concept went immediately viral. Underscoring that this can be no laughing matter, research published in 2013 showed an increase in emergency room visits by people walking and using a cellphone.
Drawing from that research, the National Safety Council, a nonprofit safety advocacy group, issued a release Wednesdayestimating that pedestrians buried in their cellphones suffered 11,101 injuries from 2000 to 2011. A previous New York Times article documented the rise in such cases, including the anecdote of Tiffany Briggs who, lost in her phone, walked into a truck in San Francisco. She was fine and so was the truck.
If texting and walking lanes catch on, there’s no telling whether safety would improve, but it well might be nice for everyone who would like to walk without being zombie bumped.