(Mirror Daily, United States) – The world has a serious problem with texting. And while there are a lot of funny videos on-line with people texting and hitting poles or garbage cans, the behavior can lead to more gruesome incidents than the viral ones. The zombie apocalypse was foreseen a long time ago; the difference is that the smombies are not out looking for brains, but rather likes and re-tweets.

There are a lot of commercials on-line that show the dangers of texting and driving. And all of them are trying to shock the audience by showing just how much of an impact the behavior can have on an individual’s life.

There is one showing a girl texting her boyfriend that she can’t wait for him to get home. She then proceeds on asking him where he is and when he estimates he’ll arrive. But her messages are appearing on a blood stained phone on the asphalt next to a car.

It may look and sound horrifying, but that is what happens when you text and drive. And even though it’s hard to believe, the same outcome may be in check for those who text while walking.

True story, a girl was walking home, paying attention to her mobile device. While texting, liking and retweeting she started crossing a railway. The train conductor tries to warn her with audio signals that the train is approaching, but the music blasting in her earphones is not helping his case.

Because she never bothered to look to her left and right, she is hit by the train and dies instantly. This is one of the hundreds of deaths that could have been avoided if the victim would have lifted his or her eyes from the mobile device.

German authorities are seeing so many accidents related to walking while texting that they even invented a new name for the smartphone cradling people, smombies. They’re smartphone zombies, people that are refusing to lift their eyes from their device, walking around like the zombies from Evil Dead or Resident Evil.

And because there is a smombie apocalypse, the German authorities are trying to come up with new ways of protecting the technology addicts on the streets. To this end, they implemented a new traffic lights system for pedestrians.

Alongside the normal traffic lights, they added red and green lights on the pavement, where the texting generation can see them before walking into incoming traffic. It seems that the zombie apocalypse is upon us, but they don’t want our brains, just our virtual confirmation of their profound shallowness and lack of personality.

Image source: Flickr