Why protect the zombies?

The Dutch town of Bodegraven recently hit the headlines around the world for its (to my mind asinine) decision to install strip lighting on the pavement at pedestrian crossings, so that ‘smartphone zombies’ – the increasingly numerous idiots who can’t keep their eyes off their little screens even for an instant – won’t step into the traffic at the wrong moment and get themselves injured or killed.

The Dutch traffic safety authority has rightly said that such lighting sends completely the wrong message, by rewarding stupid behaviour. In any case, people who can’t even be bothered to pay attention to traffic signals, or to traffic in general, are unlikely to pay any more attention to illuminated lines at their feet (which will probably just strike them as distracting decoration). I think a much more effective way to wake them up to reality is to let even more of them get themselves injured and killed. If even that doesn’t work, we’re surely well rid of them.

Of course, the risk is that they may end up killing or injuring other people instead as motorists try to avoid them; but I feel it’s the same as with animals dashing onto the roadway. Unless the animal is large enough to do you damage (e.g. a camel or a kangaroo), don’t make things worse by swerving. And, whereas the animals at least have an excuse (either they’re wild and unaware of what road traffic can do to them, or else their owners have let them run out of control), the zombies have none. Instead, they should be prosecuted for knowingly putting other people’s lives at risk. A few high-profile trials with heavy fines, or jail sentences if the culprits are adult, would send the right message.

I say all this after reading that a teenage American girl has been killed by a subway train after dropping her smartphone on the tracks and scrambling down to rescue it. Awful though this may be for her family and friends, the subway driver was in no way at fault, and may indeed be traumatised for life. If anything, the fault lies with smartphone manufacturers for putting these things on the market in the first place, without the slightest warning about the dangers inherent in their indiscriminate use. The entire focus of smartphone marketing is on convenience, speed and instant gratification. And it isn’t just impressionable teenagers; many of the zombies are adults who should know better, and whose selfish behaviour sets their children the worst possible example.

We prosecute people for selling dangerous drugs; we prosecute bar staff for serving alcohol to people who are already clearly inebriated; and we prosecute drivers for using their cars with more than a certain level of alcohol in their blood. What’s the difference here?

And why should towns like Bodegraven waste scarce energy and money on protecting the zombies, if they aren’t prepared to think for themselves?