There are bike lanes. There are slow lanes and fast lanes. And now, at least for a little while, there's a lane for cellphone users.
The lane was drawn by the folks behind a new National Geographic TV show called "Mind Over Masses," according to Yahoo Tech's Rob Pegoraro. The show, which was inspired by clips on YouTube, according to the AP, looks at how people make changes to their behavior.
The crew wrote "No cellphones" on the left and "Cellphones: Walk this way at your own risk" on the right on a sidewalk in downtown Washington, D.C.
According to Pegoraro, the experiment didn't seem to go very well. "Many people actually using their phones did not notice the markings at all. Of course they wouldn't: They were staring, oblivious and glassy-eyed, at the screens of their mobile devices," he writes.
In fact, he says, the only time people using cellphones heeded the lanes at all was to take pictures of it.
No word on how long the cellphone lane will remain. But hopefully it will prevent at least some people from embarrassing or hurting themselves. And if you're going to insist on texting or talking while walking, please remember to look where you're going, whether there's a specific lane for you to walk in or not.