[nfb-talk] A Vehicle That Would Drive It Self

[Peter Donahue]

Good afternoon everyone,

    I feel I must jump in here as well. When I was growing up in the late
1960s I observed those around me and what happened tothe vast majorrity of
children when they became adults. Many of them eventually learned how to
drive so they could travel independently and without the need to depend on
public transportation.

     During that time I was a student at an outfit called the Boston Center
for Blind Children. This, "School for the Blind" was in no way connected
with Perkins and was located in Jamaica Plane; a section of Boston. Since I
was coming in to my teens like other teen agers I wanted a car, and to learn
how to drive it. But of course how could a blind person drive a car. I
remember expressing this to many center staff members most of which told me
that there's no way that would happen, an that it was necessary to see to
drive a car. You can get a very good impression of the attitude towards the
blind children who attended this institution was like if I told you that
there were no blind employees working there, and that those who persisted in
believing that the seemingly undoable for a blind person might one day
become possible the penalties for holding such firm beliefs could be quite
severe!

    We had one child care worker there named Lucy Pinarde. She was a very
soft-spoken, suite individual who did her best to treat her charges well
despite the hell going on around her.  As was my routine I shared my desire
to one day own a car and be able to drive it myself just as my parents and
others did. One day she took me in her arms, and whispered in my ear:

"Every day scientists and inventors discover new ways to make life better
for people in this World. Things that are not possible now will be possible
in the future. It's great that you want to learn to drive, and can imagine
that one day a car that a blind person can drive will be created. Never let
that dream die. The future holds promise for ideas like yours."

    She made similar statements to me on other occasions being sure she made
them out of ear-shot of other BCBC Staff.

    Fast-forward to the year 2000! There I was in a crowded convention hall
in Atlanta Georgia listening to the plans to construct the NFB Jernigan
Institute and the research projects the institute would undertake. One of
these would be the development of a car a blind person could operate
independently!Listenining to Dr. Maurer and others caused me to recall Miss
Pinarde's words to me during my time at the BCBC. We are now in a time when
technology exists to create such a vehicle. This is what drove Mary and I to
contribute to the Imagination Fund in the hopes that conditions will be more
conducive to our being able to develop sources of funding for such a project
in the years ahead. I told Mary how neat it would be, assuming a vehicle
drivable by a blind person is developed in the immediate future, and
assuming Miss Pinnard is still alive and we learn of each others whereabouts
it would be cool to drive up to her residence in the vehicle, and say, "We
did it! Blind people now have the opportunity to own their own motor vehicle
and can operate it independently. Want to go for a spin?"This will happen if
others like myself keep the dream of owning and being able to drive their
own automoble is kept alive and such a project can eventually have resources
dedicated to it.

Peter Donahue