Analysis of the behavior of visually disabled persons crossing intersections equipped with or without audible traffic signal (ATS) showed that the choice of direction is crucial to ensuring a safe street-crossing. In the present study, we studied whether the sonic patterns generated by presently used ATS assists blind and visually impaired pedestrians to choose directions. A new ATS intended to provide enhanced sonic navigational cues for directional choice was developed and evaluated in comparison with presently used ATS. Present ATS generate tones simultaneously, from a pair of speakers positioned on each end of a crosswalk. The new ATS, by contrast, generates sounds alternately, with either the same or different tones from each speaker. Psychological and behavioral experiments indicated that ATS of current design are particularly poor at providing cues that assist persons to choose directions appropriately during the initial half of the distance traversed between paired speakers. On the other hand, the newly designed ATSs (those producing sounds alternately) appeared to generate a navigation cue that is useful across the full length of the distance traversed. A functional difference between two alternate ATSs was discussed. For the covering abstract see IRRD E102946.
Samenvatting