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Antwerp unveils 'texting lanes' in mobile safety stunt

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By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

June 15, 2015 | 1 min read

Antwerp has acknowledged the importance of watching cat GIFs while commuting with the implementation of "text walking lanes".

To ensure that careless commuters avoid collisions, a clever marketing stunt from local smartphone store, Mlab, saw the streets of Belgian city Antwerp being decked out to ferry -distracted mobile users down a dedicated lane.

A spokesman for Mlab, the smartphone company behind the move, told Yahoo News: “You probably walk through the streets while texting or sending Whatsapp messages to your friends and don't really pay attention to your surroundings - only to whatever is happening on your screen.

"This causes collisions with poles or other pedestrians. You could, unknowingly, even be endangering your own life while you 'textwalk' when you cross the street without looking up."

The stunt is reminiscent of a scheme in China's Chongqing city which saw the implementation of mobile-only walkways as a means of cutting down on ever rising smartphone related road accidents.

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