Traffic lights in the ground? Come on, just look up from your smartphone

The city of Sydney, Australia, is planning to trial traffic lights down on the pavements to stop twerps glued to their smartphones from striding blindly into traffic and injuring or killing themselves.

Why pander to these creatures? Why save them from their silly selves and encourage them to glare downwards? How will they ever learn to look where they’re going?

And it’s not just happening on the other side of the world. The small city of Augsburg, Germany, has already installed “in-ground traffic light technology” to stop fools in headphones and on mobiles, deaf and blind to the rest of us, from wandering. Let’s not bother with it here. We have a cheaper method: Fielding and Mavis just stand still when they see a distracted fool coming their way, and they await the crash (as long as the person isn’t too big). It’s fair enough if you’re walking along, but it’s much more dicey if you’re in a car.

While driving along obediently at the mandatory 20mph, I often come to a zebra crossing with a kamikaze smartphone user barging carelessly on to it, giving me 0 seconds to stop. So I jam on the brakes, it’s whiplash for human passengers and trauma for the dogs, but worse still, Daughter and Olga (fairly obsessive smartphone user and cyclist respectively) always reprimand me. Yes, me. For almost ploughing into, having a scream at, and wanting to slap the phone out of the hands of the clueless Johnny-eyes-down pedestrian.

So, can I remind them – and anyone else who fancies an argument – that I am not a doddering, ancient driver adhering to some quaint old rules of etiquette? Because, according to the Highway Code, rule 19, you should “give traffic plenty of time to see you and … stop before you start to cross. Vehicles will need more time when the road is slippery”. Why not stick that in the ground, in large fluorescent lettering at every crossing. Or better still, read it on your wretched phones. At home.