Self-Driving Cars And Blind Pedestrians

Dr. Lance Eliot, AI Insider

Note: For reader’s interested in Dr. Eliot’s ongoing business analyses about the advent of self-driving cars, see his online Forbes column: https://forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/

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I was driving along Ocean Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway (PcH) in Malibu and Santa Monica, California when I came to a stop at a crosswalk that had no traffic signal. It was dicey that this major crosswalk has no traffic signal since it is commonly used by pedestrians that are trying to cross from the “inland” side of the street over to the ocean side of the street.

In a pack of pedestrians there was an elderly man with a white cane. He was moving the cane back-and-forth and tapping it on the ground.

It was probably handy that there were a lot of pedestrians crossing since otherwise I’d have gauged that he would have ended-up maybe half-way across and the rest of the pedestrians would have completed crossing by then. A large enough swell of pedestrians was sufficient to cover him throughout his crossing.

I’m sure you are wondering whether or not California has a driving regulation that says you are supposed to stop and let a blind pedestrian cross the street. Yes, we do. I’m sure you then are thinking, well, if it’s the…