A Common Peril Facing Sightless Persons

The first time I saw it happen, shamefully, I let it go by. The second time, I knew I would be irresponsible not to call attention to a common peril facing sightless persons, despite the aid of canes and guide dogs, which pass effortlessly under a projecting or overhanging obstacle.

The first instance occurred on Broadway downtown, where throngs of pedestrians were making their way around an unattended eye-level scaffolding on the sidewalk. Suddenly I caught sight of a man with a white-tipped cane approaching the metal-pipe structure. From half a block away, I bellowed a warning, but to no avail in the din of street noise.

Helpless, and incredulous that no one closer made a move to prevent what happened in the next instant, I watched the young man take a violent crack across the bridge of his nose. I ran forward to help him in his pain and bewilderment, but one of the workmen had rushed to his aid from a nearby hamburger stand.

That was almost two years ago. Recently, on an uncrowded residential street, I witnessed a repeat performance as a woman with a guide dog walked into a low main branch projecting from a tree over the sidewalk, a branch I had ducked under countless times myself. Worse yet, a smaller branch had been sawed off at a point well across the sidewalk, or had grown out to that point, and came within a fraction of an inch of gouging the woman’s left eye (the functional state of which would have been irrelevant in such a tragic situation).

I am skeptical of the power of legislation, but let’s think about it.

JAMES S. WOOD

Los Angeles