Section 1: Situations of Uncertainty -- Page 5 of 21        Self-Study Guide | OUTLINE | INDEX | Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | Section 4 |Section 5 | REVIEW |

Strategies for crossing where there is no traffic control

There are 2 strategies that can be effective under certain conditions for crossing during a gap in traffic:

Using distant vision to cross -- vehicles approaching too fast? Too close?

I assume that when Lorraine started to cross, she could see the headlights of the approaching cars from a great distance, but did not realize how very fast and very close they were. A few days later when I tried it myself with normal vision in broad daylight, I also greatly underestimated how close and how fast those cars were coming -- yikes!

So over the next few weeks, I came up with strategies to train people to determine when they still have time to cross, so they won't misjudge it the way that Lorraine and I did. I'll explain those strategies later in this Self-Study Guide (Section 4).



Using hearing to cross -- "clear to cross when quiet"?

Meanwhile, let's consider the situation of Dick, who sometimes crossed this street alone with his guide dog. Being totally blind, he probably used the traditional strategy -- "assume it is clear to cross when quiet."

Blind travelers who rely on hearing had been using this strategy to cross streets successfully for many years. The next few pages, I'll talk about that traditional strategy, and explain what I found out when I analyzed the situation where Dick was killed.

The rest of this Section will follow up on that revelation and explain what we now know about using hearing to cross streets, based on research and experience. Although this Section does not address using vision to cross streets, the use of vision will be addressed in each of the subsequent Sections of the Self-Study Guide.