A new Slovak law bans pedestrians from wearing headphones while crossing the street. It is part of the most complex overhaul of Slovakia’s traffic system. Starting Sunday, Slovak drivers must get used to driving with headlights on all year long, lower speed limits in towns and higher fine speeding tickets. The new road laws impose new rules, even on pedestrians. The Czech police are now looking to the new Slovak system for inspiration.
Along with several rules that are already in place elsewhere in Europe, Slovakia has come up with a novelty: It will no longer be possible for groups of Slovak teenagers to be waiting at crosswalks with headphones in their ears. Crossing the street and wearing headphones will be against the law as of 1 February.
Listening to music while crossing the street will be explicitly forbidden. “Pedestrians cannot use a walkman or other similar devices,” says Jaroslav Hořín, a traffic expert with the Interior Ministry, citing the new law.
The revolutionary new law also states that pedestrians must wear reflective clothing at night or when visibility is reduced. Czech traffic police have been considering introducing similar rules for a while, but have faced a great deal of public opposition.
Now Czech police hope that the Slovak traffic law will make it easier to push a similar law through here. “The law confirms that we are heading in the right direction. Slovakia is yet another state that is introducing such regulations. It has our support, and we would like to do something similar here,” Leoš Tržil, head of Czech traffic police, told the online daily Týden.cz.
But he says there is no plan for now to ban pedestrians from listening to music. “I can’t really imagine how that would work. It’s true, though, that a person engrossed in listening to music is not able to pay attention to what is going on around him. It’s an interesting idea worth looking into: Finding out how many traffic accidents are caused by people listening to music. We could then see how to approach the issue,” said Tržil.
