Bright LEDs flash warning signals to smartphone users who veer onto this interactive road surface, which is designed to disappear during the dead of night and reappear only when needed.

Designed by London-based software company Umbrellium, the Starling Crossing aims to update the Zebra crossing for the 21st century.
With the use of smartphones and heavier traffic, more prompts are needed for pedestrians, drivers and cyclists to make road crossings safer, explained Umbrellium founder Usman Haque.

"The pedestrian crossing that we know hasn't really be updated since the 1940s, and these days we inhabit our cities in quite a different way." Haque told Dezeen. "We have mobile phones in our hands that distract us, and our relationship to the city is very different." "The pedestrian crossing one of the most complex moments of interaction that almost everyone experiences on a daily basis," he continued. "It's that one moment where you're actually negotiating with others as well as potentially as with big chunks of metal."

LEDs embedded in the surface of high-impact plastic panels that form the road surface are triggered by cameras monitoring the scene. The cameras anticipate the next movements of the vehicle, pedestrian or cyclist and the patterns of the crossing are adjusted accordingly.
Held together by a metal framework that ensures the surface doesn't pull apart under the weight of vehicles, the matt panels are also designed to be sl...