In China, they use an ingenuous way to help the blind make their way around the major cities. The only problem is that the planning and upkeep was not executed properly.
When I moved to China I found that most of the sidewalks had an entirely separate path/lane built straight into the sidewalk. These paths are typically bright yellow and have raised bumps on them. I had no clue what they were for and happened to ponder that aloud when I was with someone that had the answer. I had an immediate "aha!" moment when they said "it's for blind people." It made perfect sense!
After this new revelation of the purpose for these paths, I was much more aware of them. I observed them in many locations and started "translating" the different designs on them. The dots indicate that there are multiple directions you can choose to go OR that you have come to the end of a path (usually found at an intersection or driveway). The long lines give the direction the sidewalk goes. What an ingenuous way to help the blind find their way through the city even WITHOUT the use of a blind cane. The raised bumps can easily be felt through your shoes - trust me, I was so intrigued that I even started walking on the paths and not paying attention to where I was going just to test that theory of mine.
With all of the observations of the paths it meant that I was also VERY aware of its inefficiencies. My opinion was that many of the mistakes I found were likely due to the contractors putting the tiles in not knowing the purpose of the path. The best way to resolve this would be to educate the contractors on the purpose and giving them explanations of what each tile means. Sometimes I would find a tile with lines facing the wrong direction or a random bumpy one put in the middle of a path for seemingly no reason. Unfortunately, this would hinder a blind person using said block/street for the first time but with some repetition they would be able to remember the exceptions to any frequently used street.
My second observation was that sometimes paths seemingly led to nowhere or just ended abruptly and then picked up somewhere down the street. I'm not sure of the actual reason for these aberrations, but I have a couple ideas. Some of them looked like possibly there was construction done in the area and instead of replacing the tiles they just left them as they were prior to the construction. This is highly likely since China is constantly in a state of construction. Perhaps some of them were due to broken tiles and contractors just replacing them with whatever happened to be available.
My final observation was that sometimes these paths led to or through places that could be highly dangerous to someone without sight. Occasionally a tree would be in the middle of the path, or it would lead through a bike rack or something would be laying across the path (for example: a drainage pipe being used or a sign board) or a manhole would be wide open in the middle of a path.
Sometimes, for fun, my friends and I will follow these paths just to see where the moment of catastrophe would happen. It's all fun and games for us - but I would hate to have to rely on these paths as a blind person.
There are several blogs that have been made to show the absurdity of all these mistakes and inefficiencies, so I won't cover those here BUT I will provide links to some of these blogs so you can see examples of what these paths look like in real life.
Those of you who have been to China, drop a note to share the most absurd blnd lane fail you've encountered.
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