Despite being there for your safety, many people still ignore the red man at traffic lights and cross early, running the risk of a deadly accident. Now Smart, a car maker, has come up with a smart idea for an experiment to see if safety could be improved at traffic lights by encouraging pedestrians to wait for the green man with a "Dancing Traffic Light".
The Dancing Traffic Light was designed to draw the attention of people who were standing waiting to cross the road in Portugal. It shows a dancing red figure, as opposed to the static (静态的) figure that is normally shown. The figure is a low-resolution (低分辨率的) representation of someone who is in a room nearby, dancing.
Those who want to dance can go into the room and then select music of their choice. When the traffic light turns red, the music plays and the individual can then start to dance. A video is fed of the person dancing in real time to the traffic light and the dancing red figure can keep pedestrians amused while they wait.
Apart from providing entertainment for pedestrians as they wait to cross the road, there is also the "gaming" side to the Dancing Traffic Light as anyone can be the dancing figure and so he or she can contribute to the project.
This isn't the first time that entertainment has been used for positive social outcomes. The Volkswagen Fun Theory campaign involved a Piano Staircase which encouraged people to walk up the stairs instead of using an elevator and the Bottle Bank Arcade that was made to encourage people to recycle.
Smart said that 81 % more people stopped at die red light to watch it dance while they waited for the green light to appear.
