Blind mother worries about safety, future

It's a short walk from Lisa Couture's Meadow Pointe home to her children's school, Double Branch Elementary.

In an ideal world, the half-mile trip would take 15 minutes. But for Couture, who's blind, the situation's not ideal. After counting driveways and groping through the gate of her subdivision, Couture faces a potentially fatal obstacle on her way to the school: Meadow Pointe Boulevard.

The two-lane road has a crosswalk, but nothing else to ensure the drivers doing 40 mph or more let Couture safely cross the road.

Using only her well-tuned hearing, Couture tries to gauge the speed and distance of the cars bearing down on the crosswalk. She can wait as long as 10 minutes, steeling herself to step into the street.

"Even something like the trees behind me blowing in the wind can make it so I can't hear," Couture said. "I wouldn't know I'd missed a car until it was right on me."

One recent school day, Couture stood at the corner of Meadow Pointe and Chancey Road, her white cane in hand, waiting to make the trip back home from school.

As the county-funded crossing guard packed up, Couture found her senses overwhelmed by the roar of school buses leaving Double Branch. The sound obliterated the hiss of passenger cars approaching the intersection.

Eventually, she picked up the sound of cars stopping to let her pass. As she crossed the street, a white sedan approached from the north, the driver showing no signs of slowing down. The car stopped with its bumper a few feet from Couture's legs only after the passenger warned the driver of the blind woman in the crosswalk.

Crossing Meadow Pointe Boulevard has become an everyday risk for Couture. But she worries what will happen next year when Pasco County detours thousands of additional cars onto Meadow Pointe - and then onto State Road 56 - as part of the widening of S.R. 54. County officials also plan to raise the speed limit on the road to 45 mph when the detour starts.

Tampa Bay area roads are notoriously inhospitable to those on foot. The region regularly ranks high nationally for pedestrian fatalities.

Couture hopes the county will take measures to ensure her safety and the safety of other people crossing the road. A "blind pedestrian" sign would be nice, maybe a blinking light at the crosswalk, she said.

So far, she has had little luck.

The county won't install signs on her neighborhood's private streets because she lives in a gated community. She doesn't live on Meadow Pointe Boulevard, so county officials have told her they won't install a sign there, either.

"If I lived on Meadow Pointe Boulevard, I'd be better off," Couture said with a hint of sarcasm.

Bob Reck, the county's transportation operations director, said his department will study Couture's situation in the next 30 days to seek a possible solution.

"We will also be referring her issues to the sheriff's office for enforcement," Reck said in an e-mail.

State law requires drivers to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. Another state law says drivers must wait for blind pedestrians to clear the crosswalk before moving forward.

In Couture's experience, those laws make little impact on drivers' behavior. So she waits and listens and screws up her courage again and again.

"However long it takes me to stand there, I'll stand there," she said.