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NEWS > TECHNOLOGY > BLIND PEOPLE FINALLY TAKE TO ROADS IN NEW CARS
BLIND PEOPLE FINALLY TAKE TO ROADS IN NEW CARS
February 9 2011
Blacksburg, VA – Cars have undoubtedly been one of the most important inventions in the history of the human species. Their integration into the world has allowed advances at a pace far faster than even the fastest Lamborghini. It isn’t just the 
machines themselves, it is their use as a tool that has pushed society forward, expanding territory, growing the human population, and allowed the transport of goods and services across huge expanses of land, even the entire globe. A hundred years ago an object from China would have been a rare commodity in America, but now such items are more than common.
More than just its influence on culture, the motor vehicle has also created physical and psychological changes in human beings. Most cars are incredibly complex machines, even just for drivers, requiring us to develop all new types of responses to stimuli that simply weren’t required before. The complex task of operating a vehicle and responding to the various needs of the vehicle and environment are a world away from anything our ancestors could have comprehended, unfortunately not everyone has been able to participate in that step forward. Though the overall percentage of people with 
significant visual impairment is low, about 2.6 percent across the world, the sheer numbers mean that nearly 200 million have never been able to drive a car, until now after an advance at Virginia Tech University may finally puts a whole new level of blind drivers on the street.
“The other day, when we got to drive by ourselves, it surpassed any perception of thrilling. It's scary and exciting. We're trying to change people's minds about what blind people can do, and driving is going to change minds,” said blind driver Anil Lewis. “We were missing boxes, swerving and soaring. I never thought I would be able to drive again after I lost my sight but here I am driving away like nothing every changed.”
The system uses a network of sensors to indicate to the operator that obstacles may lie ahead, allowing even totally blind drivers to drive.
“This is certainly interesting technology unfortunately it is unlikely that it will ever come into widespread use, realistically. The major problem is certainly cost but the other is acceptance by the public. It’s going to be very hard for people to get over the notion of sight being essential to being able to drive, we are so used to seeing what’s ahead of us or what suddenly comes up,” said Scrape TV Driving analyst Kenneth King. “That will provide a significant barrier to public acceptance which of course would be required to licence these drivers. Plus one has to wonder whether or not sighted people will accept eye tests anymore, providing us with a kind of tiered system. The problem there is blind or partially blind people could very well be licensed like sighted people and potentially not get the correct vehicles.”
The school has no plans on pushing the technology into commercial applications.
“There other problem is not so much the blind drivers, but the other drivers. That is often the case when it comes to driving issues. It is the other driver doing something stupid or mindless that causes the majority of the problems and most of those are sighted, at least one would assume they are sighted,” continued King. “However this would open up a whole new world for a large part of the population who have previously relied on buses and taxis. They would probably have issues when going to buy a car, not being able to see what they are getting, but that is the lesser of the major problems these blind drivers will create.”
Gender will not be affected by the new system.
Martin Philton, Technology Correspondent
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