Acknowledging that some people simply cannot put down or look up from their beloved mobile devices, the Chinese city of Chongqing sectioned off a 100-foot stretch of pavement on Foreigner Street so people playing games or texting will be safe from running into something.

As off-beat as the concept sounds, there is some commonsensical reasoning behind it. Reports of traffic accidents stemming from driving while texting regularly punctuate the news, but also common are incidents of pedestrians so enraptured with their phones they wander into streets and paths of oncoming drivers.

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In New York City, transportation officials have emblazoned the word "LOOK!" at intersection curbsides as a warning for texters not to step into the street when cars are actively going by. In the Scottish capital of Edinburgh, the city has taken to wrapping lamp posts in pads of foam because texters were walking into them. 

China, too, is grappling with the issue. In Chongqing, the new lane, split into paths for opposite-going foot traffic, features a picture of a phone painted on the ground with the word "cell phone" written in Chinese characters and English. A thick white line separates the lane from other walkers and bicyclists on the sidewalk. 

The idea seems to have been inspired by a social experiment aired earlier this year on "Mind over Masses," a behavioral science program running on the National Geographic Channel.

On the show, producers sectioned off a segment of a sidewalk in Washington, DC, stenciling "NO CELLPHONES" on the left and "CELLPHONES: WALK IN THIS LANE AT YOUR OWN RISK" on the right. It was found that walking texters tended to move in a straight line and rarely ran into anything unless something came at them from an unseen direction.

China has taken the Washington experiment and put it to practical use, as it seems more and more inevitable that cellphone-only pedestrian walkways are quickly becoming a necessity in many places around the globe.

Tagscellphone, driving while texting, walking while texting, Chongqing, pedestrian lane, sidewalk, cellphone-only sidewalk, walking and texting, Chongqing, cell phones, mobile devices