Visual processing and crossing roads danger.

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Does anyone else have visual processing issues?

I have got to the point where I cannot go out further than the commons round the corner alone, because I have severe difficulty with crossing the road.

When I am trying to cross a road (other than one where there are rarely cars to cause problems, like my street, but not the other street at the end of mine), the cars shoot out from random directions, the road sort of bends and moves. And my vision blocks out certain objects, including cars approaching me, so I just don't see them at all.

Yesterday I nearly got hit by a car. This has happened so many times and I have been hit by a car twice before.

When I am trying to cross a road I get disorientated and usually end up dashing across the road, heart racing, hoping I won't get hit.

I am scared to go out alone and as a result I am housebound except for uni (government funded taxi gets me there) or when a support worker comes round.

I can cross at designated crossings with traffic lights on them (just press the button and wait), but there aren't any designated crossings near my house.

I have been waiting three months for a neurophthamologist appointment but the NHS are p*ssing me about.

I have to stop typing now as my vision is converging and it's confusing me.

I don't have anything as dangerous as that, but I have trouble judging safe gaps in traffic and processing what I see into decisions about how to move. I take extreme care when I'm anywhere near moving vehicles, there's a "deliberate" flavour to my movements which resembles my slowness in a complex social situation, as if some intuitive thing is missing. It's hard for me to look ahead very far. Extreme care has become very habitual, so it doesn't bother me much and I make good progress when I travel. I'm still learning to accept that my non-stop beeline is likely to be interrupted here and there. I can't remember any particular accidents that taught me this, but I remember perplexing motorists here and there. Part of my problem is that I don't completely understand the unwritten rules of the road.

I don't seem to have the problem but I have a way to cross the street safely. You probably learned it in kindergarten too:

Look left, look right, left again, go, in the middle look right again.
(or "Look right, look left, right again, go, in the middle look left again" if you live in a left-hand traffic country)

This way you limit the input.

1. You look left and only pay attention to the cars coming from your left.
- You see a car coming - you wait till there is a gap.
- You see a gap - continue to step 2.
2. You turn your head to look right, paying attention only to cars coming from right.
- If you see a car coming - return to step 1 and repeat whole operation.
- If there is a gap on right - continue to step 3.
3. You look left again to see if the gap is still there.
- If you see a car on left - return to step 1.
- If the gap is still there - continue to step 4.
4. Go.
5. No need to pay attention to the left anymore. Turn your head right while you walk so you can focus on the cars coming from the right before you reach the middle.
- If you spot a car coming from right - stop in the middle(or just walk towards the middle slowly) to let it pass unless you are sure you are able to pass before it comes(speed up in that case).
- If there is still a gap on right - just pass.

Alternative whole operation . Passing on zebra in country where people on zebra have strong priority.

1. Look left and make sure the car on your left has some gap and is not coming too fast. (You don't want the driver to get scared and hit the brake suddenly, it's dangerous)
2. Move one foot towards the street but don't go on the street yet. It says "Hey, I wanna pass!"
3. Look if the car on left stopped.
- If he didn't - let him pass(considering him a criminal) and look at the next car on left.
- If he did/next car did - continue to step 4.
4. Go.
5. No need to pay attention to the left anymore. Turn your head right while you walk so you can focus on the cars coming from the right before you reach the middle.
- If there is a car on the right look what the car does while you walk.
Once you realize it slows down - go ahead and don't worry anymore, it will stop.
Once you realize it is already close and it isn't slowing down. You stop/slow down in the middle for your own safety letting it pass and consider the car driver a criminal.
- If there is a gap/the car on right stopped/slowed down. - just pass.

I just realized you are from London so you must change all left to right and all right to left in my steps(I can no longer edit it). I live in a country with right-hand traffic. The general idea is: look at the stream of cars close to you, then the other side of street, close to you again, go and look to the stream of other side of street when you are heading to the middle.

My vision blocks things out. I am always very cautious on crossing roads, I look several times each direction. But because my vision blocks objects out I don't always see the cars.

Also my visual processing means that I see the cars coming out from all directions.

Oh, I get it now. Sounds like you have a good strategy but your eyes prevent you from using it anyway because thy cant limit the input correctly. Do you have Irlen Syndrome? What you describe sounds like it.

You can try pinhole glasses till you can get professional help. They are cheap (even £1 on Ebay) and apparently help with many visual processing issues. They reduce brightness and field of view.
Even if they don't help with your road issue you might at least find them useful for reading.

I have Irlen syndrome yes.

Pinhole glasses sound useful. I'll have a look.

have you think about acquiring an assistence dog?

I have considered it but I doubt my uni allow animals into lectures. My tutor (he doesn't 'get' autism at all) certainly would get me into trouble for it.

Just realised one aspect of my visual problems - often when I first look at a thing, it takes me a second or two to make anything of it at all, especially what I'm looking at is crowded or dark. When trying to navigate through traffic, the time taken to translate the mass of sensory data into a good appraisal of safe gaps etc. is too long.

I have a rare low vision disorder that makes me extremely nearsighted & have some colorblindness that makes crossing roads somewhat dangerous for me too. I don't have problems with the crosswalks that make noise but i sometimes have problems when there's just a light because I may not always see it. If I don't know what the crosswalk is doing or the crosswalk doesn't have a light; I listen to the traffic in addition to checking both directions & I dart across when I don't see or hear any fast moving traffic around like when traffic is at a distance or going slow or cars are stopped.

I have a real problem with this and need someone to be with me to hold onto my shirttail or belt loop etc to keep me from wandering out into traffic because of poor awareness of my greater surroundings and kind of a mental tunnel vision.

I know an assistance dog might not be feasible, but I would definitely ask your university's disability services rather than your tutor. They might better understand autism.

I know most public spaces require that assistance dogs be allowed but don't know about universities.

If you have a certified guide dog they have to let you bring it into class, etc. But it's not easy getting one.

You clearly do not understand much about dogs. Contrary to popular belief, guide dogs for the blind, do not, never have and nor will they ever decide when to cross the road. They are dogs. Trainers do not sit a dog on the side of the road, hold its head, move its head from side to side, and say, see those cars there, we have enough room to cross now. Dogs CANNOT judge the flow of traffic. A blind person MUST be able to get around with a white cane before they are trained with a guide dog. The person decides where to go, not the dog.

Blind people are taught, during what is referred to as Orientation and Mobility training to use their hearing to judge the flow of traffic. They can hear which direction the cars are going in, they can hear the sounds of traffic lights, etc. But they will not cross really main roads alone, without traffic lights, as they simply are not able to do so. A guide dog can help in that it will ensure they walk straight across the road, very easy to go slightly off course with a cane, but the dog cannot and does not decide when to go, and it cannot tell the person not to go.

Guide dogs are specifically trained to ignore traffic light signals, as it is up the human to decide whether it is safe to cross. A dog can learn the different beep sounds for stop verses walk, but does not comprehend a ambulance going past or the like. If you are standing at traffic lights and hear a siren, you stop, waiting for it to go past. A guide dog cannot be taught such things, as they rely on doing things every day and no one experiences such things every day.

I would be consulting with an occupational therapist with extensive experience in Autism and sensory issues to see if they can come up with ways to assist you. What works for one person will not work for another. You could consider orientation and mobility training from someone who works with the blind, to see if strategies that work for them in terms of teaching them to use hearing, can help you, but it may not help. But a dog cannot make the decisions that you are wanting it to make.

I would definitely recommend looking into O&M. It sounds like it'd really help you and would be the right approach for you. Learning how to understand the information from your other senses better is a really important thing when you have such impaired visual processing, just as if you don't have the vision in the first place.

I've not had good luck with OT personally in regards to my visual processing, all the OTs I've worked with didn't know to look into things like O&M, and thought there weren't things to do. However I know of others who have benefited much more in that area than I have.

I will repeat again, like the person before me however, it is NOT a guide dog's decision when to cross the street. It's your decision. That's why people need to already HAVE the skills for how to survive without a dog before adding a dog. (With any service dog, adding a dog without the coping skills already doesn't work. People want to think they're a quick fix, they're not. They're another tool, but one that is added to a lot of work already completed)