Dublin City Council is trialling new pedestrian crossing lights on the pavement to help so-called ‘zombie pedestrians’.

The lights between Capel Street and Tara Street were installed to alert people of changes to traffic lights while they are gazing at their phones. 

On Lunchtime Live, listener Anne said she “laughed” when she first heard the news, thinking it was “madness”. 

Having now considered the reasoning behind the move, she now understands why they are being trialled. 

“They have their headphones on and I don't know how many of them have walked into me or they just realise their bus has gone by because they're so engrossed in their own little world,” she said. 

“But it is dangerous because they literally just keep continuing walking and they just like to say, ‘Well, there's a cross here, I'll just walk across’ - and they don't even know whether it's a red man or a green man.”

However, if the changes are rolled out widely, Anne hopes that phone users will pay greater attention to them. 

“I'd hope that if they do do this, that they actually see the man down at the bottom of the thing, because they're so in their own world, they might need to see that either,” she said. 

“It's as if they're in their own zone and they don't even know there's people around them. 

“I mean, talking about zombie walkers, there could be a zombie apocalypse and they wouldn't even know what's going on.”

Main image: Ground traffic lights. Picture by: Discover Dublin.