Utah School Introduces 'Texting' Walk Lane For Students Who Can't Look Up From Their Phones

Utah Valley University has come up with a novel solution to slow-walking texters. The stairway to the new Student and Wellness Center has three separate lanes: walking, running and texting. Students with eyes glued to their phones never have to worry about slowing people down again.

According to Fusion, the creative director at UVU, Matt Bambrough, sees the stairs as a design project first and foremost. "You have 18-24-year-olds walking down the hall with smartphones, you’re almost bound to run into someone somewhere; it’s something we’re dealing with in this day and age," he said. "But [preventing collisions] isn’t the reason we did it -- we did it to engage the students. It’s meant to be there for people to look at and enjoy."

Although the lanes will keep pedestrians out of harm's way, it's not just people that the zombie texters are bumping into. “They walk into barriers -- chairs on the side of the hallway, or railings,” Robbie Poffenberger, assistant news editor at the UVU Review, told Fusion. “I’m sure they’re fairly embarrassed.”

Kenzie Jones, sports editor at the UVU Review, says the whole campus can be accessed from indoors, so more people use the corridors during the winter and make the problem worse. "People just walk slowly with phones in front of their faces,” Jones told Fusion.