How Do You Know the Light is Green?

When I was newly blind and learning to use a white cane, orientation and mobility (O&M) instructors taught me to rely on the surge of traffic at my parallel to recognize when the signal is green and it’s safe to walk. That principle is reinforced every time I travel to Morristown, New Jersey to train with a new Seeing Eye dog. In fact, at the Seeing Eye, one isn’t eligible to be matched with a dog without having completed O&M training.

Dogs are color blind. Seeing Eye dogs can’t read the stoplights, so it’s not their job to determine when it’s safe to cross a busy street. They are trained to go right up to every curb at each street crossing they get to, stop right there, and trust their human partner to use their sense of hearing to figure out what direction traffic is moving. Once we’re certain that traffic is flowing the same direction we want to travel, we give our dogs the command to cross.

As those of you who know the story of Harper know—the dogs are trained to keep an eye out and to disobey their partner if the team is in harm’s way. If, for example, the human just makes a bad call about crossing, the sidewalk has been ripped up for construction, or, as in Harper’s case, a car simply doesn’t stop when it should. It’s called intelligent disobedience, and it’s a pretty difficult thing to ask the dogs to do, when you think about it.

Since that near miss with Harper the hero, I do whatever I can to have the parallel traffic on my right rather than my left. It means that at four-way stops, cars in front of us won’t turn right into our path. I also don’t rely on pedestrians who tell me it’s safe to cross – the sound of the surge at my right parallel is more reliable. Once the traffic on my parallel starts going, the cross traffic can’t run a red light without smashing into the surge. An excerpt from my book Writing Out Loud might help explain. It took place when my Seeing Eye dog Hanni was guiding me down a busy Chicago sidewalk with Michigan Avenue at our right parallel:

Hanni stops at the curb at Jackson.
I feel pedestrians rushing past us. They’re crossing, but the traffic on Michigan hasn’t started yet.

My face betrays my confusion. That, or the guy next to me is a psychic. “It’s red, but there’s no traffic,” the mind reader says. “We can go. You want my arm?”
I tell him thanks, but I’m waiting for them – I point to the traffic on Michigan – to go before I cross.

“Okay,” he says. But it’s one of those okays like “Okay, I tried to help you, but if you’re crazy enough to stand here all day, be my guest.”

When I hear the Michigan Avenue traffic start up, I say “Hanni, forward!” We’re off. “Good girl!”

This afternoon the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT), in coordination with the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities (MOPD) is hosting an open house Public Meeting about a plan to pilot 50 to 75 Chicago intersections with Accessible Pedestrian Signals (APS). An email invitation to the open house describes Accessible Pedestrian Signals as “devices that communicate information about pedestrian signal timing in non-visual formats such as audible tones, speech messages, and/or vibrating surfaces.” I’ve come across APS in other cities we’ve visited — Madison, Wisconsin comes to mind, Urbana, Illinois had a few, and many cities in California use them. I find APS pretty useless. They don’t all work the same, they can be difficult to understand, I can’t be sure if hearing “beep, beep, beep” means I should cross or I should stay put, looking for the button to press to activate the APS can get me off-track and make it hard to find the crosswalk again, that sort of thing. And sometimes the beep, beep beep noise makes it difficult to hear and judge the traffic surge. And then there are the poor people who live and work near one of the APS and have to hear it all the time!

Translation: I am skeptical. And I can think of a million other excuses not to attend the open house this afternoon (I lead three memoir-writing classes in three different Chicago neighborhoods on Thursdays, temperatures outside today are suppose to be in the 90s, yada, yada.

But I think I’ll go. Here’s the info if you want to join Seeing Eye dog Whitney and me there:

The public is invited to attend an Open House Public Meeting regarding this pilot project at the following time and location:

Date: Thursday, July 18, 2019

Time: 4:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m

Location:
City of Chicago
Chicago City Hall
121 N LaSalle Street, Room 1103
Chicago, IL 60602

The purpose of this meeting is to introduce the project, APS prioritized locations, and sample equipment, and to receive input on the proposed improvements.

The meeting will be an open house format (no formal presentation). City representatives will be available to discuss the project and answer your questions.

Comments can be provided at the time of the meeting and will be accepted through August 1, 2019.

Comments can be submitted at www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/cdot/supp_info/aps.html or http://tinyurl.com/ChicagoAPS