Man with vision loss stranded after Calgary Transit signals malfunction

CALGARY (660 NEWS) — Imagine you’re at a Calgary LRT station waiting to cross the tracks as the lights flash and bells ring, only to continue waiting — positive that the signals aren’t working properly — now imagine you suffer from vision loss.

Christopher Warner, who lost most of his vision 14 years ago, was attempting to cross a street-level crossing from Anderson Station to Willow Park Village on Oct. 8 and could hear the bells and see lights flashing with his partial vision.

“I stood there to wait and see if there was a train. After about a minute or so, maybe a little longer, it became fairly evident no train was coming and I could see you know people sort of taking a quick glance and sort of darting back and forth you know going against the lights kind of thing,” he explained.

“So, their actions and the time it took, sort of indicated that no train was in fact coming, but I personally didn’t feel safe to go against the lights, just in case I was wrong.”

As he continued to wait for about five minutes Warner said his mindset changed.

“I decided to wait a little longer to see if any of the passersby would take notice of me standing there with the white cane and offer to help in some way,” he stated in his Facebook post. “No one stopped, nobody acknowledged the guy with the white cane at all.”

In response to his post, someone commented “‘It goes two ways, you could have asked for help,’ and that is true, but it’s hard to randomly ask for help when you can’t make eye contact with somebody, it becomes more difficult.'”

Although he didn’t have any help that night and instead had to walk back to the station building at the other end of the platform and take the bridge over the tracks, Warner believes the public can learn from his story.

Warner was carrying a shorter white cane Tuesday night “and the identification cane’s purpose is to let others around the person know (…) that I’m a person with vision loss and that I might have trouble in certain situations, but I do have some partial sight.”

The shorter cane is different from a mobility cane, which is quite tall and usually measures up to a person’s shoulder or underarm. “That kind of cane is used typically by somebody who has a lot less sight, they’re not necessarily completely blind (…) but they definitely have less sight so they use that more for finding obstacles that might be in their way.”

Warner says if you see someone with a white cane standing in a place like a train crossing, it’s okay to ask to see if they need help.