Japanese city passes two-hours-a-day smartphone usage ordinance The city council in the Japanese city of Toyoake has passed an ordinance that symbolically limits recreational use of smartphones to just two hours each day. The council passed the ordinance on Promoting the Proper Use of Smartphones [PDF] because it wants residents – and especially students returning to school – to get more …
What really annoys me if I'm turning into or out of a road and giving way to a pedestrian as I should most of the time they don't even see me motioning them to cross.
Nose buried in phones and not paying any attention, always seem surprised when they look up and there is a car there waiting for them to cross.
And I'm pretty patient about such things, usually, although not according to my wife.
So I've wasted time trying to obey the law and be helpful and half the time missed a slot to turn out of the road so have to sit there and fume.
"always seem surprised when they look up and there is a car there waiting for them to cross"
I find a carefully timed blast on the horn is usually sufficient to send their phone shooting out of their hands and into the sky in a fairly hilarious manner. When it then plunges into a grating the hilarity is of course increased.
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THIS!
Where I live, we have long speed bumps with crosswalks on them that were designed to make cars stop and let pedestrians cross. Often, we see zombies stop at the beginning of the crosswalk and wait, eyes glued to their smartphones. When I am driving, I honk a bit to make them wake up, just to avoid them crossing when I start to pass.
The worst culprits are those who stop in the corners or crosswalks because they called an Uber and are just waiting for it. I had some people waiting for Ubers in front of the parking gate of my building. Honk honk.
most of the time they don't even see me motioning them to cross.
What really annoys me as a sans-smartphone pedestrian is when drivers at driveways and intersections ignore my "you go first" hand signals and honk at me.
The reason I don't cross in front of them, even when they are "stopped", is 'cause I can't feckin' see through their tinted glass (even "ordinary"-level factory tint in bright sunshine) to tell whether they actually see me, or are themselves the phone zombies.
I don't know the UK situation but I stayed a month in Lima, Peru in for 2019/2020 NYE and gosh they are bad. Much, much, worse than us Canadians.
Dude on a moped, at a stop sign? Whips out out the old trusty.
Two attractive young people of opposite sex on a date (not that it matters but it's more likely to indicate a romantic context)? Not one looked at the other in 10 minutes.
The traffic in the shuttle from the airport was horrendous, as expected. Very stop and go, say 10-15 km average speed. Most of the buses (smaller than Western ones, but bigger than minibuses) are informal things, not company run (you pay the $1 coin, you get in, you ride). So, cue for the drivers to drive with one hand on the wheel, the other with the phone. The shuttle, professionally driven, provided a good platform, being more elevated.
Walking around looking at phones was the least of it. They must have much cheaper data plans than us Canadians, fer sure :-(
I don't really see this as overreach - as far as I can tell (as a westerner), most laws like this are brought in with the people in mind. If the locals don't like the law, they will find a polite way to say so to their local officials.
For the record, I visited Japan earlier this year, and I saw plenty of "don't walk whilst using your phone" signs.
There were also a lot of "don't walk on escalators" signs!) So unlike london, where you scurry down the escalator to catch your train in the middle of a big scrum, in Japan, you stand on the escalator and then join a queue. If you're in rush hour, that polite queue will then try and entirely fit on the already busy train, and yes, some of the trains really do get *very* full - i.e. well beyond "full" for the tube or the commuter lines in and out of London.
And finally, quite apart from not walking whilst on your phone, "jaywalking" in Japan doesn't really seem to happen much, even on quiet back streets out in the suburbs.
This doesn't feel important because the law's symbolic and unenforced. The city has no way to tell how long you used your phone or what you used it for, therefore nothing happens to you if you ignore them. Consider how you would feel if this was an actual law and they required or got your usage data in order to enforce it. Would your opinion change?
In my opinion, although I would be willing to ignore it as it stands because I can't fight everything, I do see it as an invalid law which is needlessly paternalistic. This kind of thinking is how you end up with things like the OSA, and there are many politicians who think they do have the power to make and enforce such things, from time limits to not allowing moderation of stuff they like (currently not legal there). If it wouldn't be acceptable if they were more serious, it isn't now.
I'll get on condemning them after Zucc and co give all their money back for making everything so "engaging."
Had to pull my kids out of the local schools because the little shits absolutely DGAF about school any more, because they know all they have to do is go online and vaguely assert that the faceless teacher is persecuting them for their beliefs and the witch burners online turn out to do the dirty work for them.
When I was a kid I was told that there would be world peace, a more mature mankind with homes on the moon.
Instead we have this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/subway/comments/rkxo31/i_wonder_how_many_people_ate_the_actual_wrapper/
I fear that mankind has taken a turn for the worse (and more stupid) at some point.
I used to work in London until recently. I'm so glad to be out of there.
The numerous iZombies walking around either watching some feed or other, texting, and/or sharing their conversations with the world with the phone on speaker. Always completely oblivious or uncaring to what's going on in their general direction of travel. And what's with having the phone sticking out sideways from their lugholes, or attached to their lower lip like they're eating a metallic Ryvita? When you bump into them or re-direct their travel as they drift into your path, their single minded brains switch from the apparently highly important phone thread to the in-your-face whilst shouting expletives thread.
The eMissiles are rarer, but getting increasingly more common. They're like iZombies, but are propelled by electric scooters or bikes. They're just as oblivious most of the time, and completely ignore traffic lights and road crossings. These guys cause serious damage when they hit someone - a friend was in hospital for two days after an impact caused a dislocated shoulder, multiple fractures on his forearm, and a fractured rib. The eMissile didn't stop and alas has not been seen on that commute route again (yet). I was hit hard once but thankfully only had heavy bruising along my arm and shoulder pain for a week. We were both hit (at different times) on traffic light controlled junction crossings on a pedestrian green light (not "jaywalking").
Bring back the red public telephone boxes with proper landlines on street corners, and jam the hell out of mobile phones within cities - please!
Chopping off the hands of the culprit ?
I recall reading during the Tokugawa shoganate that a samurai was permitted to decapitate on the spot any subject who was behaving erratically.
Pretty zero tolerance policing by any standard and certainly no complaints of justice delayed — denied... perhaps not so much.
Even so, should I ever have the pleasure of visiting Toyoake I will pack a "feature" phone as I am rather attached to my hands and would prefer them to so remain. :)
I'm not sure that "walking with phone" is as much of a problem in Japan as in other countries.
Japan "used to have" ?? a cultural norm that walking while doing something/anything else (eating, smoking, using the phone) was wrong.
Someone who has been their more recently may wish to comment.
I did go there somewhat recently and there was a lot of demon rectangles out at times, but I wasn't paying much attention to that.
There wasn't any complaints about phones being out while waiting standing in a line with walking as the line moved forwards.
The taboo seems is still there and primarily seems to only apply to eating and smoking, as well it can be enforced for those as;
- People who sell unpackaged food generally give you somewhere to eat it and otherwise food tends to be wrapped up in an excessive amount of plastic (as there is no bins available, you either have to continue lugging the plastic around or litter it).
- There are smoking rooms usually available and people don't seem to tolerate getting hit by 2nd hand smoke.
Before "smartphones", "using the phone" generally was being on a phone call, which still isn't liked on a bus or train, as well people don't like even talking quietly on a bus.
But otherwise, now like many other countries, it's a country around half composed of itoddlers (and around the other half are androids? (very unreliable, but see; https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/japan), a sizable percentage of which have an addiction to such (what the proprietary software is designed to induce), thus there would really be far too many people with phones out while walking for any enforcement to work.
