[Blindtlk] Raising a Cane

Sun Sep 27 22:52:05 UTC 2015

Arrielle:

I don't worry much about getting cars to conform to a certain behavior
pattern because (and I'm joking here but not altogether) I consider the very
act of getting behind the wheel tantamount to lowering one's IQ by fifty
percent. Put less acidly, I figure I have little-to-no control over what
cars do so I try to read their behavior as best I can and feel that the
position my cane is in (other than aggressively sticking it out right as I
start to cross) will have little influence on driver behavior.

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: blindtlk [mailto:blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Arielle
Silverman via blindtlk
Sent: Sunday, September 27, 2015 2:04 PM
To: Blind Talk Mailing List
Cc: Arielle Silverman
Subject: Re: [Blindtlk] Raising a Cane

Christine does use a cane, the issue is being told to hold the cane up while
waiting to cross the street, as a signal, then putting it down and crossing
with it. As to Mike's comment, How do sighted pedestrians signal that they
are crossing, without a cane or a turn signal? I assume they use some form
of body language. I consider extending my cane slightly in front of me to be
an appropriate form of body language. Like Christine I don't see the
additional value of raising my cane up off the ground. Further, I agree with
what I think she was saying, which is that we want cars to drive normally
rather than stopping in the intersection or doing other weird things because
we are blind. If they depart from normal car behavior, they give us
confusing information about whether or not it is safe to cross. Of course if
I am in the middle of crossing I want cars to stop. That goes for any
pedestrian, blind or sighted.
Arielle

On 9/27/15, River Linda via blindtlk <blindtlk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Are you saying you can see well enough to cross the street without 
> using a cane? Or, you just do not want to use it because you are 
> embarrassed to use it and you do not want the attention from people? 
> The cane is for your safety. As you have described holding your cane 
> vertically off the ground in front of you, the cars coming from behind 
> you will not see your cane. I was taught to keep the cane tip on the 
> ground and hold it out diagonally from you so that cars coming from all
four directions can see it.
>
> As for people grabbing you, you have to tell them how you want to be 
> treated. When people grab me, I tell them to wait and let me show you 
> how to help me. When people make that comment about me being amazing 
> because I can cut my food and eat it, I simply respond with "you, too".
>
>
> On Saturday, September 26, 2015, Szostak, Christine via blindtlk < 
> blindtlk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>   Ok, this might be a very odd question, but I was just thinking 
>> about this and to me, it  seems really illogical.
>>
>>   When I was getting O&M to help with transitioning to a cane, every 
>> time we stopped at a curb to cross a street, the instructor would 
>> have me hold the cane directly in front of me and hold it up in the 
>> air vertically about
>> 2-3 or so inches off the ground. The explanation given to me for this 
>> was so that others would see that I am blind and am using a cane.
>>
>>   The reasons that this seems a bit odd to me as a good practice are:
>>
>> 1)  I do not want a car to stop at a stop sign and wait for me to 
>> cross as I have always been taught not to trust in drivers that say, 
>> go ahead I will wait because they may not see other cars coming that 
>> could hit me if I follow their advice. Also, just because they stop, 
>> it does not mean that they see you so the signal you are assuming 
>> they are giving you, may not be the case.
>>
>> 2)  I do not necessarily want to bring attention to my blindness.
>>
>> 3)  I tend to look younger than I am and thus people, to my 
>> consternation, always try  to grab my arm... to help me. When I was 
>> in training for one of my prior guides, my instructor always joked 
>> that I was a really touchable person because total strangers would 
>> try to drag me across the street since they just assumed that I did 
>> not know  how to cross a street with a light:). This happens to me, 
>> regardless of whether it is with traffic or even in places like 
>> restaurants, total strangers will frequently grab my arm, put their 
>> arms around my shoulders... and tell me how amazing I am to be eating 
>> so well:). Since I really do not want this type of attention, I tend 
>> not to want  to use methods that are likely to induce it:). Since I 
>> could see holding a cane in the air as one good way to get this type 
>> of attention, I am not overly eager to keep up this practice.
>>
>>   Thus, do others here hold up their canes while standing on curbs 
>> and if so, what has been your experience with respect to the above 
>> issues? I really, personally do not like this practice as it would 
>> seem to me that if you are a competent traveler who follows the  
>> rules of the pedestrian and knows what you are doing, then you should 
>> not need to do this as it simply tells someone, this person is blind 
>> so stop and wait for them as they will not be a safe traveler or is 
>> trying to signal that they need your help.
>> Perhaps I am completely misunderstanding the point of doing this but 
>> I just really feel like this is an out-of-date practice, one that 
>> tries to heavily point out blindness which would seem to lead to 
>> increasing the stigma rather than showing that we are competent 
>> individuals, and something that could actually be dangerous rather 
>> than helpful to a cane traveler.
>>
>>
>>   I can understand this type of practice if you want for some reason 
>> to indicate that you are blind or have a VI (i.e., when  you are 
>> concerned that you may trip... and do not want individuals to just 
>> think that you are
>> clumsy...) so please know that I am not trying to discount these 
>> types of situations rather it is just on the curb side if you are 
>> just trying to cross the street  and have any of the above three 
>> reasons for not wanting to do so that I am asking about and feeling this
way about.
>> Happy weekend all!
>> Chris
>>
>> Dr. Christine M. Szostak
>> Assistant Professor of Psychology
>> Department of Social Sciences
>> Shorter University
>> Rome, Georgia
>> szostak.1 at osu.edu <javascript:;><mailto:szostak.1 at osu.edu 
>> <javascript:;>> cszostak at shorter.edu <javascript:;>
>>
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