Eye-popping Icelandic crosswalk brings traffic to a crawl

By Matt Hickman, Mother Nature Network, December 11 2017

Ísafjörður's optical illusion of a crosswalk is designed to get motorists to slow down. And there's potentially more three-dimensional painted zebra crossings to come in this remote Icelandic town. (Video screenshot: Gústi Productions/YouTube)

Iceland is a place of such dramatic, otherworldly beauty that many visitors have a hard time believing their very own eyes. Over the past several years, the island-bound Nordic nation has emerged, for better or worse , as the world’s preeminent blink twice and rub-your-peepers-to-make-sure-you’re-not-hallucinating destination. Double takes, audible gasps, and veering rental cars off of roads while gawking are all par for the course.

It’s that last reaction — distracted driving while speeding to get to the next awe-inspiring site — that’s problematic. To address this, Ísafjörður, a lively fishing and tourism hub in northwest Iceland’s far-flung Westfjords region, has embraced a novel approach to improving traffic safety: fighting rubberneck-inducing fire with rubberneck-inducing fire.

Dreamt up by town environmental commissioner Ralf Trylla and executed by local pavement marking company GÍH Vegamálun , a traditional, striped crosswalk in the center of town has been transformed into a pedestrian right-of-way that appears to be hovering directly above the asphalt.

To be clear, this shifting 3-D optical illusion doubling as a run-of-the-mill crosswalk is a distraction (and disorienting, to boot). However, the town is confident it will slow traffic, if not bring it to a complete stop, without freaking out too many overwhelmed out-of-towners already dazed by the unreal-looking natural scenery of the Westfjords.

Speaking to Quartz , Trylla notes that Ísafjörður’s new mind-bending artwork- cum -crosswalk sprung from the need for improved road safety without resorting to the installation of speed bumps, which, according to a 2016 study conducted by the U.K. National Institute for Health, can lead to motorist back pain and increased levels of air pollution. “I was looking for other possibilities and different solutions to slow traffic other than regular speed bumps,” he explains.