American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults
Future Reflections Winter 2025 CANE TRAVEL
A Travel Lesson to Heed
by David Meyer
From the Editor: For most teens, fitting in with the crowd takes on consuming importance. Some blind teens become convinced that “fitting in” means traveling without a cane. O&M instructors have endless stories about students who find every excuse to leave their canes at home. In this article David Meyer shares an adventure from his teen years. Fortunately, he lived to tell the tale! He worked for many years as a music therapist, and he is an active member of the NFB of Illinois.
I still remember the night vividly. I was eighteen years old, and I was a student at a rehabilitation facility in Minnesota. I had been introduced to the cane approximately a year earlier. I hadn’t thought much about how the cane could help me, and I did not know anything about how using the cane might protect me legally. I’d been told that I needed to use a cane when I traveled, so I did so—for the most part.
I have been blind since birth. I attended a school for the blind for many years, yet it is probably fair to say that I still did not accept my blindness. I had several blind friends, most of whom had attended the school for the blind with me, but I was highly interested in making it in the sighted world. To me that meant traveling the same way my sighted peers traveled. Did I really need to use a cane?
Somehow I convinced myself that I would be a superior traveler if I could get from place to place without a cane in my hand. Why not try it? I needed a few groceries. I had the perfect opportunity to travel just as a sighted person would travel.
Though I only had to walk a block to find the local superette, it was a journey with several potential risks. First of all, it was dark out. I had no idea how good the streetlights were, whether drivers would be able to see me. Furthermore, I had to cross the street at a busy intersection with a traffic light. None of these things entered my thoughts when I embarked upon my journey.
Things seemed to be going well, as I didn’t even run into any obstacles. I got to the intersection and crossed it without difficulty, listening to the pattern of the traffic.
It was then that someone came up to me and asked where I was going. After I told him my intentions, he gently took my hand. “This is my uniform, this is my badge, and this is my gun. I am a police officer. Where do you live?”
Why did he do this to me? After all, I was doing just fine, so I thought. The obvious answer, which of course I never thought of at the time, was that he was looking out for me. He was doing his job, and he was doing it well. We went back across the street together, and he walked me home.
Looking back on this incident, I can think of a number of things that could have happened to me, none of them good. I could have been struck by a car. Had I been struck and injured, a court could have ruled that I was the one at fault. But had I been struck by a car when using my cane, I would have been protected by the state’s white cane law. I could not have been cited for contributory negligence.
For those who may think it’s cool to travel in a busy area without a cane, please don’t do so! The cane will help you find steps and curbs. It will help you get around obstacles, and it will identify you as blind so that drivers will be more mindful when they approach you. If you ever are involved in an accident, you will have the law on your side.
Though I did not get my groceries that night, I began to learn something far more important. I began to understand that using a cane would enhance my life rather than detracting from it.