After a retinal disease left him legally blind, architect John Gleichman was struck by a taxicab while walking home near Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo — at the same intersection where a 4-year-old girl was killed by a hit-and-run driver years earlier.
Maureen Reid, left, and her guide dog, Gaston, cross the intersection of Wood Street and Roosevelt Avenue with Sandy Murillo, center, and Geovanni Bahena, relying on an audible signal for the blind, on Wednesday, April 26, 2023, in Chicago. A federal court ruling slamming street crossing signals in Chicago as dangerous for blind and low-vision residents are giving momentum to advocates who say the community has long been left out of the push for safer streets.
“Every time I go out to go downtown for a meeting, I have to think I could get hit today and not make it home,” said Gleichman, 65, who has been struck four times times by vehicles while navigating the city with his white cane since being diagnosed as legally blind in 2005. He considers himself fortunate to have escaped serious injury each time.
Accessible pedestrian signals, known as APS, have been around for decades, though the technology has evolved. “That kind of made it dawn on me,” said Murillo, who produces a radio show for The Chicago Lighthouse and writes a blog on issues facing the blind community. “I thought, 'Oh, so that's what it is. They're there for people like me.'"
“Sometimes I would stand at an intersection for like half a minute and no car would come by,” Gleichman said. “So you either ask somebody walking by, ‘Do I have the light?’ or you just go out in the road and hope you don’t get hit.”
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