The future crosswalks in Dubai

By Horatiu Boeriu. Read Bio
August 8th, 2008 | Interesting | 11 comments

With hundreds of jaywalkers fined in just three weeks and tons of money to spend, the Dubai authorities are looking into reinventing the crosswalks.

In order to accomplish this, they turned to the latest technology available and of course, not the cheapest at all. As you can see in the photos below, some high end video projectors will display an image of people crossing the street. Of course, the “imaginary people” are portrayed in red colors, to reinforce the stop light.

No idea how much such a system might cost, but I’m pretty sure it’s more expensive than the paint you see on the street :)

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George

@Horatiu:Very interesting post.Thanks! Judging from the cost and the average life of the projector lamps, this new idea could be really expensive. Why don’t they hang a net instead? Ha,ha.
pimp

Horatiu where are u from ?
http://www.bmwblog.com Horatiu B.

@pimp:

I live in Chicago. If that was your question :)
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jz

if you see how people drive in dubai you’ll understand the idea :) to be honest, driving there is relaxing, even a bit too relaxing, but now i mean the fact that there nobody is used to let people pass the street, even policemen, so if you paint somenthing on the ground, nobody will notice that.. even lane lines are often ignored there so painting a ‘zebra’ wouldn’t make pedestrains safe, i even think that i’d be quite the opposite
Mark

What an interesting concept…..if it will work…I suspect that it will not work because if the drivers there are like the one where I live, they are too distracted by their cell phones, PDA’s, kids, cappuccinos, newspapers, etc to pay any attention…

Cheers,
Clara

Pretty wild. Where did you get this from, so we can read more about how it works?
http://www.bmwblog.com Horatiu B.

@Clara: Clara, I actually came across these photos on Flickr, but I will try to find out more and post a link.
http://www.techweasel.com Paul Huizenga

Other than the fact that it defies the laws of physics, seems like a good idea…

http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2008/04/24/designers-idiots-or-morons/

“A magnificent idea, with only two minor drawbacks.

One, there’s no way to make lasers do this, and two, there’s no way to make lasers do this. I know that technically speaking that’s only one drawback, but I thought it was such a big one, it was worth mentioning twice.”
Clara

What you need is some gas or particular matter to project on (or intersect lasers for contrast)…. there was a display device using a “sheet” of rising steam.

In one picture it appears to have small wires (nylon?) that could awkwardly rise out of the pavement along the posts for a display surface. Hopefully it’s not capable of severing pedestrians’ limbs.
Clara

@Clara: correction.. .”particulate matter”