Can training enable people who are visually impaired to cross safely at roundabouts?
by Dona Sauerburger

excerpted from listserv message of the TRB Joint Subcommittee on Roundabouts ANB20(3) -- October 13, 2005


The following message was written in response to this question from a traffic engineer:
"I wonder if the visually impaired get the same level of training on how to cross a roundabout as they do with signalized intersections and non-signalized pedestrian crossings?"

Dona replied:
Roundabouts are actually non-signalized pedestrian crossings, and I've been struggling with the issue of teaching blind people to cross at non-signalized crossings since 1988, when a blind man and his wife (colleagues and friends of mine) and his dog guide were all killed crossing where there is no traffic control. The driver in the lane they were crossing slowed down for them and they proceeded -- the driver behind that car pulled around and sped up and killed them all.

Until that time, the only training available for teaching blind people to cross with no traffic control was two simple strategies: "cross when quiet" and "don't cross non-residential streets where there is no traffic control" (the textbooks where these statements are written are cited below). Because of the tragedy, I started analyzing whether the "cross when quiet" strategy really is effective. I found that there are many places where it is effective and reliable, but places where it is NOT … places where, even when quiet, it's simply not possible to hear the cars well enough to know it's clear to cross.

Of course, when it's noisy, like at busy roundabouts and intersections with channelized right-turning lanes, it's even more difficult to hear whether it's clear to cross.

So what I teach blind people who are learning to cross at unsignalized crossings now are the concepts that 1) there are places where you can't tell if it's clear to cross, even when it's quiet, and 2) at places where you can tell it's clear when quiet, you may be unable to tell it's clear whenever there is noise (they have to learn how much noise is too much).

These AREN'T easy concepts to learn. I spend at least as much time training people at unsignalized crossings as I do at signalized ones. Just yesterday, a few hours before I read your messages about how easy it should be to teach people to cross at unsignalized crossings, I was working with a young visually impaired man with a cognitive disability to learn how to cross the unsignalized entrance to his development beside a busy 2-lane street (at that time of day, lots of cars came into and out of the entrance he needed to cross). He had learned that he is safe as long as he crosses when he can't hear any cars, and he didn't realize that this isn't true if there's noise. There was a very loud leaf-blower nearby that masked the sound of all cars until they were almost next to us and he had no warning about their approach. He thought that since he couldn't hear any cars, it was safe to cross.  He had to learn about the implications of noise on his ability to hear traffic -- I will have to teach him to recognize when it's quiet enough that he can cross, and when it's too noisy.

He also needs to learn a concept that is even more complicated than recognizing when it's too noisy, and that is recognizing those places where he can't hear the cars even when it's quiet. I've developed a procedure for teaching that concept which takes a lot of time (I'll cite those references below also), I don't know if he'll be able to grasp it with his cognitive disability -- I'm optimistic because he's been able to learn everything else so far, but he tends to need very concrete, specific rules. He can learn to cross at signalized crossings by learning simple rules (such as starting to cross when the traffic that moves in the nearest lanes of the parallel street start to move, and scan for cars at specific places during the crossing), but I don't know if he can understand the subtleties of the concepts necessary for crossing at unsignalized crossings (concepts such as realizing when it's too noisy to know it's clear to cross, and when he can't tell it's clear even when it's quiet).

So, bottom line -- when you must rely on hearing instead of vision, crossing at unsignalized crossings is a very complex issue. There is a lot that must be taught to prepare blind people to cross places with no traffic control, like roundabouts and channelized right-turn lanes. It's not a simple concept, the "rules" are complicated, and not at all like crossing with vision. If you have some ideas for strategies that we can teach that would enable blind people to cross roundabouts safely (and you're willing to accept responsibility / liability that the strategy you're proposing is reliably effective, as we in our profession must), PLEASE let us know.

References for teaching blind people to cross at unsignalized crossings:
Related topic - yielding of drivers:
References that cite the traditional strategies "Cross when quiet" and/or "don't cross at non-residential unsignalized crossings"

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