Road signs need to be placed on the ground to guide “zombie pedestrians” glued to their phones, a government transport adviser has said.

Shaun Helman, who advises the Government and transport authorities around the world, said redesigning streets would have a “greater impact” on preventing accidents from pedestrians on their phones than trying to change behaviour.

It could mean embedding strips of red lights on kerbs to signal to pedestrians looking down on their phones to stop at junctions, or special lanes on pavements marked as “text walking lanes” with painted white arrows and lines to guide smartphone addicts glued to their screens.

“If we are thinking about injury prevention and the dominant ‘safe system’ approach used within road safety, there is actually a strong case for redesigning infrastructure over relying on other methods of changing behaviour,” said Mr Helman, chief transportation scientist at the Transport Research Laboratory.

Even if there were public education programmes to “nudge” people off their phones, there would still be those who continued with “undesirable behaviour” or made mistakes, he explained.