Kay Burrows

October 20, 2002

My name is Mary Kathryn Burrows, I go by Kay and I live at [ ... ] in Seattle Washington. As a person who is transistioning into blindness and who is just learning my skills I find the noise from the various signals hides the sound of traffic and makes crossing for the most part more difficult. The only true thing it tells me is that the light has changed. In no way does it tell me if I am safe crossing the street. One of my closest calls came when I was first exposed to the noisey things and I trusted it was safe to cross, but what it didn't tell me was that two cars and a Metro bus had all run a red light. That was one quick lesson to me that the signals were not creating safety, but lulling me into the bad habit of not trusting or using my ears to tell me when it is safe to walk. Blind people have been crossing streets for years without these so called helpers. When I hear a cuckoo telling me to cross I find it insulting as I grew up hearing cuckoo to be a uphanism for crazy. I am not going crazy or more foolish, I am going blind. I would perhaps be crazy to rely on the audible signal instead of listening to traffic. These devises are very expensive and if placed on every corner would not only prevent tax dollars from being spent on more deserving projects, but could be so noisy that the sighted public would begin to think of the blind as an incompetent nuisance incapable of taking care of themselves. We battle enough ignorance about our abilities and capabilities without it costing millions and millions to tax payers to add to the level of noise pollution in our communities with chirps beeps cuckoos and other unnatural noise.

Sincerely,

Kay Burrows