BEND, OR -- Commute Options held its first ever Walk and Roll-About in Bend Tuesday.
Representatives from ODOT and the City of Bend participated with members of the visually impaired community and those in wheel chairs.
Kim Curley, with Commute Options, says the exercise gives sighted officials the experience of walking through a roundabout blind.
“I mean, as a driver and a pedestrian, some of our roundabouts are really challenging anyway. And then you take away somebody's eyesight and then it's pretty wild,” Curley tells KBND News the group visited three different intersections and roundabouts: Empire and Purcell, Butler Market and 27th, and the pedestrian crossing at 6th and Greenwood.
Curley says the goal is for officials to consider what they learned yesterday when developing future transportations plans, “We've got some engineers and some decision makers and others here with people who are visually impaired and they're actually putting on blindfolds and using canes and going through some of these pieces of built infrastructure”.
Curley says there is one main thing drivers can do to help pedestrians, “If we could just have a little bit slower driving in roundabouts, I think the reaction time of drivers and also people crossing, and biking…It's just a lot safer.”
