In this Chinese city, phone addicts get their own sidewalk lane

Some places have lanes for bicycles, others for motorcycles, but there’s a place in mainland China that boasts a different type of lane altogether: one for phone addicts glued to their screens.

This is not progress.

If the idea sounds familiar, it’s because the National Geographic did something similar back in July as an experiment. The society stenciled “NO CELLPHONES” on one-half of a DC sidewalk and “CELLPHONES: WALK IN THIS LANE AT YOUR OWN RISK” on the other half. The result? Well, among other things, they found that the people actually glued to their phones didn’t even notice the markings at all. Typical.

An outcome that seems a bit obvious in hindsight.