[nfbmi-talk] Opinions on audible crosswalks?

Sat Aug 24 22:23:42 UTC 2013

Hello Chris and Doug,

Well, you cover 3 general areas, the environmental issues of the various
intersections and their complexities and, second, us, as blind travelers
with our many variations in training and characteristics and our need to
interact with the environment to be free people.  Third you address the
political issue of the availability of quality travel training.  After all
our ability to travel freely and freely associate is a human right practiced
and defended in the U.S..  Good travel skill allows us to enjoy liberty.  I
would like to comment on a fourth element, that is, our bodies.

I was in a car accident in the mid 90's.  I hit the right side of my head
pretty hard.  For many months after that, I had a lot of vertigo which
actually never entirely went away.  Ever since then, veering has become a
problem for me.  Again, last summer, I had heart surgery.  You may not think
it would have an impact on travel, but I feel differently about my personal
travel than I used to.  Also, ambient sounds bother me much more than in the
past.  Lawn mowers, weed whackers and leaf blowers interfere with my ability
to judge traffic.  This may be due to natural hearing loss as part of aging
and my life-long love for loud rock and roll.  These changes are
disconcerting and demand a certain amount of courage for me to get out and
confront the environment with different physical and sensory abilities.
Mainly, I have refused to let them interfere with my right to be free, but
it has taken some hard thinking to overcome my self-doubts.

My philosophic tendency is to eschew audible traffic signals.  I actually do
not want them at all to tell me about traffic, but I would love an audible
beacon to keep me headed straight, especially in those 6 and 8 lane wide
street crossings.  I like 1-way streets for this reason since the idling
cars are a good sound cue, especially if they are on my side of the
intersection.

The 2 most bothersome kinds of intersections are those where traffic never
actually fully stops.  Those with signaled left turn lanes and of course the
right turn on red lanes that never stop.  The second of these are
round-a-bouts.  I don't mind just crossing to the center with any traffic
gaps that may occur, but I have found some round-a-bouts with no place to
get off the street in the center of the circle, either having a wall or some
kind of blocking landscaping.  There is no independent way to tell about the
center of the round-a-bout if I haven't traveled in an area before. When I
come to these, I sometimes just walk away a block or so and try to cross at
a 4-way intersection.  I would love suggestions on a better way.  This may
be a topic for J.J. to discuss with MDOT, since round-a-bouts are popping up
everywhere.  It would be good to devise a reliable pedestrian interface for
these bothersome intersections.  I think Dave Guth and others at Western
have done some work on this topic.

So, audible traffic signals sound alluring and intuitively logical.  They
may serve different functions to different people.  They may be dangerous
and not intuitively obviously dangerous to sighted engineers or other
planners and politicians and even other blind people, especially those
without good training as you mention.

There is another trend with public transportation, here in Lansing.  That is
to place bus stops in the middle of large parking lots with no sidewalks or
other identifiable pathways to the storefronts, but this is off the topic of
audible traffic signals, but does relate to methods for navigating large
areas of pavement with no directional cues in the pavement.  

I just got a iPhone.  It has a compass.  I have used Braille compasses in
the past.  I cannot use a braille compass in the middle of the street while
trying to use my cane, listen for traffic, etc.  The phone is amazingly
sensitive.  I have not used it to cross a street, but I have used it to keep
me straight while crossing large areas of concrete or asphalt and it works
amazingly well. It is especially helpful in noisy environments where finely
detailed sound cues are masked by loud construction equipment echoing off
from buildings.  I think this tool needs to be approached carefully to learn
its limitations, but it has a lot of promise to me.  

Our bodies change.  The environment changes.  There are often chaotic and
unpredictable events in our environment as we travel.  Our very best method
is to get good training from qualified and philosophically guided travel
instructors who understand the NFB approach to structured discovery or
guided inquiry  or discovery learning(if I have that term Correct) along
with regular practice to keep up our skill and confidence.  It is easy to
get away from practice, but it will increase our confidence to just get out
and move around.  We need to be aware of our bodies and the changes that
happen naturally or due to trauma over time.  Recognizing these changes and
believing that we can work to ameliorate them with practice and, possibly,
some remedial training can be helpful.

Speaking of remediation, there is personal and institutional remediation.  I
hope that everyone who cares is ready to get out and demand that Michigan
reinstitutes quality training programs in Michigan.  We have never reached
the level we ever should have, but, historically, in the main, we have had
pretty good fundamental training.  I know lots of blind people who have had
their training here and they are free to move about independently.  I'm not
sure that it is presently true that Michigan training through the state
agency will adequately prepare people to travel freely and independently.  I
do not believe that it is totally safe for newly blind adults to be trained
in travel at the BS for BP, though there are undoubtedly good trainers in
the system, the present training policies do not allow those trainers to
fully train people to travel safely and independently.  .  We may have to
have group mobility lessons together on the picket lines.  The very best
training comes from our collective action.  We travel the streets of Lansing
and the Halls of the legislature to have our voices heard.  We are brothers
and sisters together changing what it means to be blind.  We encourage,
cajole and love each other into ever greater levels of independence and
self-confidence which results in improved levels of training and services to
all blind people.  We now, need to hit the pavement, together, again as we
have many times before.  It is up to us and only us.  Be ready if called
upon.  We will need your help soon, I think.

We need to employ our bodies, our skills and plunge into the environment to
make a change.  
Doug and Chris, thanks for your wise and loving help freely given to us as
we ask it from you.  You 2 are dearly appreciated by me and many others whom
you have helped around our state.  Keep it up.

Warmest Regards,

Fred
-----Original Message-----
From: nfbmi-talk [mailto:nfbmi-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
Christine Boone
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2013 11:26 PM
To: NFB of Michigan Internet Mailing List
Cc: NFB of Michigan Internet Mailing List
Subject: Re: [nfbmi-talk] Opinions on audible crosswalks?

This message is from Doug Boone with some additions from me:

For starters we must ask ourselves: How do you define a complex
intersection? Doug and I have both worked with folks who have received
blindness skill training that they believe is excellent-- most people really
love their travel teacher, because no matter how far he or she has taken
them toward independent travel, they enjoy more freedom after training than
they did before: 

Some of these good folks have come to us requesting assistance with
intersections that they define as extremely complex-- and we have discovered
that in many cases the intersections are actually simple to moderate
crossings. 

That said however, both of us have encountered some truly odd intersections
that would benefit from accessible pedestrian signals.  This is often the
case when there is an excessive amount of ambient noise in the surrounding
environment, or when the intersection has 3 or more streets converging-
especially when 1 or more of the streets have only intermittent traffic.
When traffic is heavy and consistent, even really complex, multi-street
intersections can be successfully navigated without accessible pedestrian
signals. 

But no matter how we define a complex intersection, and no matter how well
an individual has trained in blindness travel skills, the accessible
pedestrian signal gives only one part of the equation: when the light
changes from green to red, and whether the walk sign is lighted.  The signal
does not give any indication of what traffic is doing, and whether or not
drivers are obeying the law. Indeed audible pedestrian signals can create a
sense of complacency that lowers the blind persons attention level so that
they are less aware of traffic itself.  

One positive thing that has happened in recent years is that the noise
produced by the signals themselves has been considerably reduced. The older
louder signals actually created a hazard because they were noisy enough to
mask the sound of traffic almost entirely. 

So those are our thoughts. It will be good for J.J. to meet with the MDOT
people and to discuss these things...but the ultimate fix is a quality
rehabilitation agency that offers consistent, superior training to its
customers and can consult effectively with MDOT on when and where accessible
signals should be installed.  An agency that is run and managed by
individuals who are not acquainted with the practices and/or the profession
of vocational rehabilitation will not have the ability to provide anything
in the way of meaningful partnership or consultation on matters concerning
individuals who are blind.  

Boone Christine Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 23, 2013, at 11:33 AM, "J.J. Meddaugh" <jj at bestmidi.com> wrote:

> Through talking to some people on Twitter, I've got a meeting set up with
some MDOT people about accessible pedestrian signals. Their policy is that
they'll install one if blind pedestrians regularly use that intersection.
> I'm going to talk about the need for audible signals at complex
intersections where traffic patterns aren't easily discernible but was
curious as to your opinions on the matter. I know NFB has shifted opinion
over time on the issue.
> Just to clarify, I'm not claiming to represent NFB of Michigan for this
meeting,.
> Thanks much.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Best regards,
> J.J.
> 
> 
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