After a retinal disease left him legally blind, architect John Gleichman was struck by a taxicab while walking home near Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo at the same intersection where a 4-year-old girl was killed by a hit-and-run driver years earlier.
CHICAGO (AP) After a retinal disease left him legally blind, architect John Gleichman was struck by a taxicab while walking home near Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo at the same intersection where a 4-year-old girl was killed by a hit-and-run driver years earlier. Although Maya Hirsch’s death in 2006 ignited a citywide crusade for […]
A federal ruling blasting Chicago planners for not equipping more of their intersections with audible signals that help blind pedestrians cross busy streets has given advocates a victory they call long overdue. The judge's recent ruling could push other major U.S. cities to install accessible pedestrian signals. The decision mirrors a previous federal ruling in New York, which is ahead of schedule in complying with a judge's mandate to retrofit most of its signalized crosswalks in the next decade. Fewer than three dozen of Chicago’s nearly 3,000 intersections with visual crossing signals are equipped with audible cues. A future hearing could determine how many intersections must be upgraded and when.