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World's first lighted zebra crossing in the Netherlands
Because pedestrians on zebra crossings are badly visible in the dark or during bad weather, many accidents happen on a daily basis and all over the world. A lot of them have deadly consequences. To reduce the number of accidents, the Dutch company Lighted Zebra Crossing has installed the world’s first lighted zebra crossing.

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The idea came a few years ago from a 10-year-old girl called Aurora from Groningen, the Netherlands, because she did not feel safe to cross the street at zebra crossings. Her theory was that drivers often do not stop before a zebra crossing because they do not see it, so making the crossings more visible would change that.
In various Dutch and Belgian towns (Heerenveen, Groningen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Brussels), this theory was put to the test by placing mats on the streets on which a zebra crossing was displayed. The white stripes of these mats lit up when someone approached the crossing, pedestrian, cyclist or driver (see video).
As the test showed promising results, Lighted Zebra Crossing developed a lighted zebra crossing that can be installed anywhere. Instead of painting the white stripes on the street with light-reflecting paint, they created lightboxes with LED lights that function as the stripes and can be installed into the road. The dimensions are 200 x 50 cm (78.7 x 19.7 inch). Usually, two plates are installed next to each other to form one long stripe.
The company developed two versions, one for a brick road and one for an asphalt road. In the former, the lightboxes have a steel frame in which a layer of concrete is poured. A luminous plate is put on top of this. The depth can be custom made, and is usually between 8 and 10 cm (3.1 to 3.9 inch). The asphalt version does not contain a frame with concrete and is about 4 cm thick (1.6 inch). It can be installed directly into the asphalt.
The lights only use a small amount of electricity and can be connected to the streetlights, so that the crossing lights up when the lampposts do. It can also be connected with solar panels.
To test the durability, the lightboxes were installed near a transport company. Daily, about 250 fully loaded trucks drove across it, which is equal to the stress of about 2,500,000 cars. The lightboxes were also tested during various weather conditions, including frost and sun. Salt sprinkling was taken into account as well.
The first lighted zebra crossing was installed in a Dutch village called Eerbeek, which is where the company is from. It was installed within two weeks and will be officially revealed tonight. The aim is to install more of these crossings in other cities in the Netherlands soon.

Video 2Video 3  and Video 4

More info: lightedzebracrossing

Source: materia

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Pavement lights guide 'smartphone zombies'
Pavement lights have been installed at a pedestrian crossing in a Netherlands town to help smartphone users cross the road safely. The light strips are designed to catch the eye of people looking down at their device, and change colour to match traffic signals.

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It's not a difficult scenario to imagine: A group of pedestrians stand on a street corner, waiting for the crosswalk light to turn green. At least a few, if not all, are staring down at their smartphones. For whatever reason — whether scrolling through Instagram or engrossed in a game of Cooking Fever — they're not fully attuned to the traffic light ahead. A particularly oblivious walker might even step into oncoming traffic.

“Smartphone zombies,” as the Verge described them, have become a real concern — and one Dutch municipality wants to stem the problem before it gets worse.

Now officials in Bodegraven-Reeuwijk, about 25 miles south of Amsterdam in the western Netherlands, are piloting a program that they think may help protect such distracted pedestrians. At a handful of intersections around town, illuminated LED strips of light (called "+Lichtlijn,” or light lines) have been installed into the pavement.

The “light lines” can change color and are synced with their corresponding traffic lights; as soon as the normal crossing light turns red or green, so, too, does the one in the ground.

The idea, officials said, is that people on their phones are going to be staring toward their feet anyway. Why not make it more likely that they will still be able to see the traffic light in their immediate peripheral vision?

“The lure of social media, games, WhatsApp and music is great, and it comes at the expense of paying attention to traffic,” town alderman Kees Oskam said in a statement. “As a government, we probably can't reverse this trend, but we can anticipate problems.”

The project has attracted criticism from Veilig Verkeer Nederland (VVN), a group that advocates for road safety in the Netherlands.

“What you are doing is rewarding bad behavior,” a spokesman for the group told DutchNews.nl about the light lines.

Nevertheless, schools in Bodegraven-Reeuwijk that are near the test light lines are reportedly excited about the pilot program, hoping it will increase safety.

HIG Traffic Systems, which developed the light lines, hopes other cities in the Netherlands will be interested in the system as well, according to Omroep West.

In the United States, “distracted walking” has becoming an increasingly serious problem. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 5,376 pedestrians were killed in the United States in 2015, up from 4,884 the year before. Nearly three-quarters of those deaths take place at “non-intersections,” while 19 percent occur at places where pedestrians are meant to be, including crosswalks and sidewalks.

In 2015, for the first time, the National Safety Council included in an annual report statistics about distracted-walking incidents involving cellphones. The group found that distracted walking was responsible for more than 11,100 injuries between 2000 and 2011.

The council's list of pedestrian safety tips includes such age-old advice as “Look left, right and left again before crossing the street” but also now warns never to use a cellphone or other electronic device while walking.

Original: washingtonpost

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