[Blindtlk] Walking on city streets with no sidewalks

[Steve Jacobson]

Arielle,

I am sorry for the frustration this is causing, at least I think I read a
good bit of frustration between the lines of your note.  In 1997, my family
bought a house in a neighborhood without sidewalks.  It is in an inner ring
suburb, but there just were no sidewalks in our new neighborhood.  When I
was a child, we never had sidewalks in our neighborhood, but I also didn't
travel alone a lot, although we rode our tricycles in the street.  Anyway,
with that background, I felt that the house we were buying, the neighborhood
and the good schools were worth putting up without sidewalks.

I still live in that same house and neighborhood, and have gotten pretty
used to not having sidewalks.  Even so, I don't claim to have magic answers
but here are a few things I've figured out for myself.

In addition to getting to and from bus stops, I try to get exercise by
walking.  I have a route that is about a mile that I try to do a few times a
week, and most of it is without a sidewalk.  The first thing I noticed was
that I would walk into parked cars more than I generally do.  After giving
it some thought, I realized that I had much less warning when approaching a
parked car from the back or from the front as I would when walking along the
edge of a street.  If I happened to walk next to a parked car, I would
generally hear it with echolocation, but the profile was much larger in that
case, making it easier to hear.  I also figured out that my cane would often
extend under the bumper before I got a warning.  It made me get a longer
cane than I was using and that helped a lot.  

Another thing I became more tuned to is the slant of the street itself.
Most of us have noticed when crossing a street that a street is lower at the
edges and it rises to the middle and then descends.  This is less obvious
when one is walking down a street.  However, I have become more in tune with
the slant as I walk along the street.  If I feel the street slant to the
left, I know I'm to the left of the center of the street.  If I happen to
not walk a straight line, I can tell by the slant changing that I may have
crossed over the center point and I can then make an adjustment before
getting to the other side.

Even crossing a street, especially in the middle of a block, can be easier
by observing the slant.  If one is walking perpendicular to the direction of
trafic, the slant up and down should feel the same on both feet.  This is a
subtle thing, but it can be learned with time.

A third thing that has helped me is that I definitely walk a straighter line
if I am walking at a steady, somewhat brisk pace.  I don't mean one has to
walk real fast, but if one walks slow, other forces can have a greater
effect.  It is not unlike the fact that a bowling ball usually goes
straighter if it is rolling fast.

How to deal with people who are too helpful, or even are just helpful when
the help is not needed or is distracting, is really a very personal thing.
I do my best to deal with such people gracefully since I might actually need
help sometime, but I know I don't always succeed.  For myself, I would not
let such experiences cause me to walk further to a bus.  It's kind of the
principle of the thing.  If I had to deal with someone who was consistently
very difficult, maybe I would give in, I don't know, but what I have found
is that people have gotten used to me over time.  I suspect that eventually
people would come to understand that you are managing, and that if you don't
walk directly to that bus stop, that you will make the appropriate
correction.  It may take time, and it might be more frustrating than you can
handle sometimes, but I suspect it will pay off in the long run.

It is sort of funny, but sometimes when I make my one mile walk, I have more
trouble on the sidewalks now.  There are driveways cut through the sidewalks
so that when one encounters them, the slant is toward the street.  I have
one ankle that gives me some problem, and stepping onto that slant can be
difficult.  Of course, I don't have such slants when I am walking on the
street, but of course there are potholes.  Also, during our Minnesota
winters, the streets are cleared off very well by the city.  The
responsibility for clearing most sidewalks is with the residents.  When I go
into a neighborhood with sidewalks during the winter, I often find myself
wishing I could walk in the street.  <smile>  I don't think you have to deal
with winters so this is of little consolation, but I thought you would find
the irony interesting.

Good luck, and if any of this brings on questions, I'll try to answer.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

-----Original Message-----
From: blindtlk [mailto:blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Arielle
Silverman via blindtlk
Sent: Saturday, September 26, 2015 6:10 PM
To: blindtlk at nfbnet.org
Cc: Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com>
Subject: [Blindtlk] Walking on city streets with no sidewalks

Hi all. Just wanted to pick your brains regarding tips for traveling
effectively and staying oriented on streets that have no or
inconsistent sidewalks. There are some streets in my city that have no
sidewalk and are fairly quiet streets but they intersect a busy
street. When I attended LCB I got some good practice shorelining
gutters on the edge of the road or seams between the road and
driveways. But here there are often seams that come and go, or
intermittent gravel patches, or rows of parked cars that come and go,
making it difficult for me to stay centered. Sometimes the parked cars
also make echolocation difficult. How do you stay straight?
Another related aggravation is that often do-gooders will freak out if
I am walking in the street even though it's my only option given the
lack of sidewalk. Especially if I veer a tiny bit away from the edge
because of the lack of consistent landmarks, people will get really
concerned and keep asking me if I need help or if I need a ride or
admonishing me not to be in the street like I'm an errant
three-year-old. Even when I know my way, it makes me feel
uncomfortable about walking in the street because I feel like I'm
bringing all this attention on me and distracting and upsetting others
around me. How do you handle such reactions? These are quiet streets,
so I don't believe I am actually in danger (and if I hear a car coming
I always get as far to the side as I can), but because it's hard for
me to keep a straight line, sighted people don't know how to deal with
me. What are your thoughts about this?
One example: A bus stop I sometimes use is on a tiny patch of sidewalk
with grass on one side and a fenced driveway on the other. When I
cross the street to get to the stop, it's easy for me to miss the
small sidewalk patch and I have to walk up and down the block a little
bit (without sidewalk) to find it. I can usually find it fairly
quickly, but one time as I was looking for the stop, several people
stopped their cars or got out of their cars trying to help me find the
stop (and some not even knowing there was a bus stop there) just
making everything a big mess. I ended up switching to a further-away
bus stop on sidewalk to avoid that problem, but I have to walk through
a sidewalk-less block to get there.
So, how do you stay oriented, and how do you placate the do-gooders
and keep them from becoming a distraction?

Best,
Arielle

_______________________________________________
blindtlk mailing list
blindtlk at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindtlk_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
blindtlk:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindtlk_nfbnet.org/steve.jacobson%40visi.
com