We all do it, and we’ve all been irritated by others doing it: walking while checking something on your phone. You know that it’s dangerous, but when you are in a hurry and need to check an urgent mail or see if anyone liked your witty status update yet, it’s hard not to just give the screen a quick gander on the go.

Japanese mobile provider Docomo has developed a service to remove that very temptation from your life, though. By setting your Android smartphone to “safety mode,” it will give you an error message if you try to use it while walking. That’s right, cruise control for pedestrians is finally here!

The new, free feature is completely voluntary and even allows you to set the sensitivity of the motion sensor to three levels. Once it is activated, if you try to use your smartphone while walking, you will get this error message:

▼”Using your smartphone while walking is dangerous. The phone senses you are walking. Please stop.”

In order to get this screen to go away, you can stop walking, tap the close button on the screen to get 10 seconds of use, or hold down the power button to get 5 seconds of access to your pocket pal.

Of course, since this function is opt-in, it probably won’t do much to stop people who regularly walk and text, but maybe it will stop the occasional cheater and prevent a few accidents. The question is would you use this on your phone, readers?

Source: Weekly Ascii

Images: Securetradein, Docomo