If you get bored waiting for the lights to change so you can cross the road at pedestrian crossings, technology may have a solution for you.

The extremely wacky idea, which has been put into real use in Germany, is an interactive game of Pong that you can play with the pedestrian waiting on the other side of the road. You control the ball using arrows on the push-button unit that activates the crossing.

The idea was dreamed up in 2012 when a trio of interaction design students from HAWK University put forward StreetPong as a concept. A video was made of a yellow box with the pong game inserted by video editing - the actual game playing box didn't exist. The concept video was viewed millions of times around the web, so the designers Amelie Künzler, Sandro Angel, and Holger Michel thought it would be a good idea to put it into practice, working with traffic experts to build a fully-functional device.

If you’re thinking this is already an unbelievably daft story, it gets weirder.

The game units have now been created and approved for use by the city of Hildesheim, Germany. The devices are now known as ActiWait, and the thinking is that by giving you a way to avoid boredom while waiting for the lights, they’ll cut down on pedestrians attempting to cross the road without the protection of the lights.

Take a look at the (not so professional but cute) video:

If you think its a great idea then there is an IndieGogo campaign on,with 38 days to go at the time of writing, to bring Actiwait to your city. The target amount is 35,000 euros and only 1% has been raised so far but it is still early days. There are smaller pledges but if you put up 10,000 euros then you get a pair of game units to attach to a traffic crossing of your choosing - of course it's down to you to get official permission to do so.

It still sounds unlikely to us, but as an upgrade, our money is on Froggy Freeway – the sight of those frogs getting squashed would be a much better deterrent to jumping the lights.

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