How do guide dogs know when to cross the road?

What happens is the blind person listens for traffic and when it sounds like the appropriate traffic is moving, s/he tells the dog to cross. The dog will simply disobey if it's unsafe. So it's the person that makes the decision to go, not the dog.

So in your situation, you let the person know that it was okay to give the command. What would have happened if you didn't say anything is the team would have waited until the person thought it was safe, and then she would have told the dog to go.

Don't worry; you just helped speed things up a bit. They would have been fine if you didn't help them, and they're fine now since you did.

my guess is that neither the dog nor the woman were following your advice. Rather, the dog was probably doing exactly what it was trained to do and walk when the walk sign appeared.

However, the woman may have taken your kind advice. If so, she can override the dog's lead.

Just to clarify if people are interested, guide dogs pay no attention to walk signs.

Like I said earlier, the person is the one that tells the dog to go, and the dog proceeds if it is safe and disobeys if it is unsafe. At which point the person would try again.

They look both ways.

Squid wrote:

My Yellow Lab knows he can go when the light changes to WALK. The black ones must not be so smart.

I see what you did there. Way to be a racist....

I see. That's interesting. I saw you post on the other dog thread that you train guide dogs. What criteria are the dogs trained to use to know if it is actually safe to cross? I'm very curious to know this, as many large intersections can have complex movements with left turn lanes and all that.

Many of our traffic intersections have lights that play a chirping bird sort of noise when the walk light is on. I figured the blind used that.

Now, in an urban environment like this, you have many pigeons, starlings, etc that make a lot of noise. Seems to me if you was going to set something up whereby the bling could use it for a signal, you'd use a noise that you wouldn't normally hear in a downtown area -- perhaps a lion roaring or some such. Using bird noises may force the blind into intersections against their will.

Guide dogs know when to cross the road because the f u c king chicken tells them!

There is a Canadian Comic who does a great routine on a similar scenario. Blind guy and the signal that tells them it's okay to cross.

It's a team effort per say! As a trainer as well as a legally blind individual it is my part to listen to the traffic as guide dogs do not read signs. However the dogs are trained to make intelligent decisions *Intelligently Disobeying*, in unsafe, dangerous situations.

The training evolves in having a sighted partner using a 2 way to communicate with the trainer. As they drive up or told when to drive up towards the team. And the driver will communicate to the trainer when they reach what is called the dead man zone. This is the area in which the dogs must disobey a cue to cross. Though this isn't done first as one teaches these dogs about driveways with moving obstacles. Once the dogs do the auto stop on moving vehicle forward then backwards then and only then would one start the teachings of traffic in low key first.

One of my biggest pet peeves though is when drivers will not totally stop then beep their horns to more less tell a perdestrian to cross. The biggest problem is our guides are taught to don't cross when vehicles are moving and cross when vehicles are stopped. *totally stopped* No drifting is allowed. This happens even when we cross the road a driver will start drifting and what does this mean to our guide dog. It means Danger! Move quickly either forward or backwards which ever is the closest safest spot.

Hope this gives some insight.