“It’s a mine field!” “It’s really hazardous out there.” “It’s life threatening.” “It’s a product of an unthinking and uncaring society.” These are just a few of the phrases used by people who are blind to describe today’s beautiful, well-planned, resident-friendly suburban neighbourhoods.
Planners, architects and traffic engineers are well paid to design communities that meet the needs of our society, but do not seem to consider the needs of people who are blind. Apparently, we are not significant enough.
Politicians, however, are finding out that we are a significant segment of the community. Politicians are also finding out just how bad suburban designs are. It would have been cheap to make the suburban environment a safe place for all if we had started from scratch. Now it will cost big bucks to retrofit. Persons who are blind have human rights that democracy does not supersede. Even though money is tight, the deficit is growing and revenues are dropping, the needs of persons with disabilities must be met.
“Majority rules” or “the will of the people” are inadequate excuses when a whole segment of the population is being neglected. Politicians are becoming increasingly embarrassed at being put in the position of publicly having to defend negligence and behaviour by municipalities that threatens the lives of people who are blind.
It might have seemed logical as a cost-saving measure to not require subdivision developers to put at least one sidewalk on each street. But now people who are blind are expected to play “chicken” with moving vehicles as we share the same thoroughfare. It is hard to appreciate the original logic while cars are honking at you to get out of the way.
Parking is allowed on both sides of many of these “sidewalk-less” streets. They, in effect, become one lane roads with traffic in both directions and pedestrians who are blind competing for the centre of the road. In the winter, only one lane is ploughed down the centre of these streets because of the parked vehicles. In 1992, a frustrated official of our city told us that our street was not a street that people who are blind should live on. In other words, the problem of a lack of sidewalks was our fault for being blind.
When they reside on one side of the road, sidewalks will seldom meet. Pedestrians are constantly crossing the road from one side to the other to stay on the sidewalks. People who are blind are confused by this “dungeons and dragons” unconnected maze. We become disoriented and lost, to say nothing of repeatedly crossing the street looking for the sidewalk so we can stay out of the path of fast-moving vehicles.
Sidewalks are now frequently built next to the road without a grass divider separating them. In addition to having the feature of exposing pedestrians to drenchings from fast-moving vehicles, this design has the advantage of increasing the noise level and effectively reducing the usefulness of hearing for people who are blind.
Many obstacles populate our sidewalks as a matter of custom and usage: parked cars sticking out of driveways, signs, sandwich boards, bicycles, mail boxes, poles, newspaper dispensers, merchandise, chip wagons, awnings jutting at head level, improperly barricaded construction holes, construction equipment, parking meters in the middle of the sidewalk instead of at curb side and a host of other examples of the brick-a-brack of every day life.
You may think that this is pretty trivial stuff. Perhaps a few of my anecdotes will change your mind. We have had accidents with all of the above examples of obstacles. Oh yes! The response of the police is without fail that there is no by-law. We are concerned with traffic offences and crime. Ensuring order and public safety does not include pedestrian safety at all. The police are unwilling to help and have suggested when we express our concerns that we are creating a public nuisance.
I can tell you that walking into a bicycle handle bar or falling on concrete after tripping over a bicycle wheel really hurts. So does falling over a tricycle or getting your cane caught in the wheels of a doll carriage, but this is usually accompanied later by neighbours checking out the trike or carriage with concern to see if it is broken.
A driver looking to the left to make a right hand turn into the traffic on a fast moving street drove onto the sidewalk and flattened this unsuspecting person who is blind. With the return of consciousness came the awareness of a sermon being delivered by the motorist about “looking where you are going on the sidewalk”. So it’s the fault of the person who is blind for not seeing the sighted driver?
A nail puncture in my shoulder is the souvenir of a collision with a construction bin on wheels piled high with rubble being pushed out of a work site by a person who could not see where he was going over the top of the rubble.
A white cane does not give the average user enough warning time to stop moving into the unknown after it taps thin air. A particularly nasty fall into a partially barricaded hole in the middle of a crosswalk helped me make the decision to get a guide dog. These wonderful animals, however, bring with them their own set of urban hazards. Unleashed pets are a real danger. Glass, unbagged or canned garbage on the street and chemicals used to control weeds can threaten a dog’s health. Drivers who sometimes think I am sighted when they do not see my dog at the curb because he is beneath their field of vision think it is all right to play “chicken” with me. This is an unwanted game of Russian Roulette. Such games of chance in which the odds are stacked against the unsuspecting victim can be fatal.
Now that we have made our way through the uncharted mine field to the street corner, the battle begins in earnest. This is the area of maximum peril for people who are blind. We have no warning radar, protective armour or white flag of truce. At most corners, it is “Pedestrian beware”. There are no pedestrian safety laws. All the laws are written from the perspective of the motor vehicle operator. Laws permit vehicles to turn on red lights, except in “la belle province”. This vehicle movement on a red light is a particularly dangerous hazard for people who are blind. Our lives are in the hands of these people’s judgement. Hardly a week goes by without a close call.
The worst of it all is that when there is an accident, rarely is the vehicle operator held negligent. Blindness seems to carry with it its own inherent negligence and guilt because of our defencelessness in the sighted persons’ territory. The most famous case of this type occurred outside the office building of a well-known rehabilitation agency for persons who are blind, when a blind man was killed as he walked across a road on the crosswalk. The death was judged an accident because the driver did not see the blind person. The blind person’s lack of vision was fatal.
In the good old days, corners were true right angles. This ninety-degree angle allowed us to travel in straight lines across intersections by lining up with the angle.
Then came along a creative designer who figured out that vehicles could travel through intersections faster if the intersection curb was rounded. Now it is impossible to know when you have reached the corner. There are not even tactile markings. Guide dogs have the same problem since their training relies on the “straight line” concept and the user’s ability to line up with the intersection in the direction she or he wishes to cross the road. The rounded curb is a new and very dangerous menace for us.
These same creative traffic engineers figured out that if islands were placed in the intersection, cars could move even faster with access lanes that allowed right hand turns without even coming to a stop at the intersection. Now people who are blind or who have guiding vision have to cross these lanes to reach the islands and the area where traffic is controlled by the lights. Of course, the driver approaches from behind the pedestrian and cannot see a cane and the pedestrian’s body blocks his guide dog. The driver thinks that it is just one more sighted person who can see him coming and will use his sight to know when to swerve out of the way.
Finding these islands from a rounded curb with traffic which does not stop for pedestrians regardless of the colour of the lights is a killing field for people who are blind. Now, add to this insanity the needs of people who use wheelchairs without regard for people with sensory disabilities and an impossible challenge is created. The first curb cuts were built at the crosswalks. People who are blind started strolling into the middle of intersections, believing they were still on a safe sidewalk. The warning of the curb was gone. Now, to save money, curb cuts are built in the middle of the corner so that one will service both directions. We now can step into the intersection at a forty-five-degree angle and double our risk by jay walking without any warning.
In winter, the sides of these curb cuts become very icy and cause numerous accidents for people who are blind. They cannot see the curb cuts and thus do not line up on the it correctly or avoid it all together. Inevitably, the street snow plough ends up plugging the ends of sidewalks at the intersections after the sidewalks have been ploughed. This lack of co-ordination and failure to clear the ends of sidewalks is very disorienting as it buries the curb. The curb is key to safe mobility for people who are blind. Needless to say, scaling snow banks in close proximity to moving traffic is a particularly nasty game of chance, as is walking on a “sidewalk-less” street in the winter where the white cane blends into the snow flakes and snow bank.
Some intersections have unique traffic light patterns where cars in one direction are given a preference to turn across the path of traffic in the opposite direction. Listening to traffic motion does not give us warning of this circumstance. There is even an intersection we know of where there are only crosswalks on three of the four sides. There are not any barricades on the fourth side as there are in England to warn the unsuspecting pedestrian, only visual signs.
At many intersections, it is possible to judge the status of the lights by the noises made by moving traffic. Where the traffic flow volume is not even in all directions we need help from audible traffic signals. Their sound need only be at a volume just a hint above the environmental noise level of the intersection. When a new set of suitable traffic signals were erected in our neighbourhood, they sounded like air raid sirens. They were audible from blocks away. They probably would have shattered crystal. The response to our inquiry about the loudness of the signals was a declaration with pride that “They are so loud, people who are profoundly deaf can hear them.”
What is needed is understanding and planning for all needs. A first step in this process is acceptance of the fact that blindness really means a lack of sight. This is a self-evident truth that has yet to be believed by urban planners, architects, designers, traffic engineers and the elected officials who oversee their grandiose schemes.
This oversight is unfathomable in the face of known fact. According to Transport Canada transportation fatality statistics, pedestrian deaths are one of the top three causes of death in Canada today. People who are blind helped to elect these officials too, and it is high time that municipally-elected office holders started representing us all!