Call Boxes to Include Devices for the Deaf

Two days on the job and LeeAnne Zirbel was frantic.

Her car broke down on a busy freeway, and the call box at the roadside was useless to the hearing-impaired woman.

“I tried the call box several times, but it didn’t work out,” she said. “I thought I was talking to a wall.”

Help eventually came, but only in the form of a passing highway patrolman.

Now, Zirbel and thousands of other hearing-impaired drivers in Ventura County will no longer have to rely on good fortune if they experience car trouble.

A collection of officials from Caltrans, the California Highway Patrol, the Ventura County Transportation Commission and other agencies celebrated the accomplishment on Monday at a brief ceremony in the CHP parking lot.

By January, each of the county’s 500 call boxes will be equipped with keyboards so deaf people can communicate with operators. The $300,000 project is financed by the county Transportation Commission.

The county is the first in the nation to get the new equipment.

“They’re probably going to help people who don’t even have problems hearing, because the noise from the freeway makes it difficult to hear,” said Ginger Gherardi, the commission’s executive director.

The call box system boasts 15,000 roadside phone lines across California, including about 500 in Ventura County.

Drivers make about 110,000 calls a month systemwide, with county motorists placing roughly 2,300 phone calls monthly, Caltrans officials said.

“A few years ago, this was an idea,” said Bill Davis, the Simi Valley councilman who sits on the commission. “Then it was a dream and now it is a reality.”