Yesterday on my way home from school I drove by this gigantic and gorgeous patch of pink tulips. With it being so nice outside I immediately decided I would hurry home and I was going to go for a walk from my apartment to this patch of tulips and take a picture. It ended up being quite a lengthy walk and the whole time all I was focused on was it felt good being outside with such nice weather, FINALLY, and how I needed to figure out something to blog about.So on my walk to these fantastic tulips, I kept racking my brain about what I would hopefully see something that would spark a blog.
The entire walk nothing came about. All I could manage to think was that I was enjoying the exercise and how beautiful the weather was. As I got to the patch of tulips I pushed the button to cross the crosswalk and I realized that when you pushed the button it didn't even "push in" it just made a beep sound. And this caused me to think about in class when we were asked if we had ever heard of the "bird chirping" when it was safe to cross a crosswalk.
I remember the first time I ever heard the bird chirping sound. I was taking a student tour of the University of Oregon with my Honor's Society group and we were at a crosswalk and we heard that noise and I immediately thought what the heck is that and why is it doing it? Later on I discovered that this sound was to signal to the visually impaired pedestrians that it was safe to cross the crosswalk. I was so thrilled because I thought it was so awesome for those who couldn't seem themselves that it was safe to cross and only were able to rely on their hearing.
So, I decided to do a little bit of research and look up the details on the details of the APS (accessible pedestrian signal).
This is what I found: They only recently began to install APS systems because cars got quieter so it was much harder to hear cars moving. Also, another thing that was brought up about a year ago is that the bird chirping sound that signals its safe to cross sounds very familiar to a pretty popular bird up around Canada called the northern cardinal. They also said that the bird sound also seemed to imitate the sounds of cars backing up or the turn signal of some motorcycles so it became confusing.
But, now that I think about it, the last time I used a crosswalk the sound I heard was more of a two tones beeping sound.
It just seems so crazy to me how difficult it'd be to actually get around especially if you knew what the northern cardinal bird sounded like you'd be a bit confused and that would be extremely frustrating.
It's also amazing to just open up all of your senses and realize what's going on around you and notice that I, myself, have heard two different APS noises and never actually realized it until now.
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