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Comment by whenchamenia | Hacker News Reader

At least in most of the usa, wearing earplugs (or earbuds, headphones, etc) while operating a car, is illegal. Please check with your local PD to be safe. You may just be putting yourself and others at higher risk by attinuating your situational awareness.

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I wear earplugs when I ride my motorcycle for longer trips on the highway. When people see this, they say "that's dangerous, you'll hear less" but it mostly cuts the wind noise, and counter-intuitively I end up hearing more than I would otherwise.

They make flat-frequency-response earplugs, too. They don't cost much more, and you get to keep the highs that provide context while still reducing the overall sound intensity. I love them for both motorcycle rides and concerts. You'll find several hits if you search for Musician's Earplugs.

I have some hearing damage with mild tinnitus and find it hard to follow discussions in noisy environments (bars, very noisy public transport, even some restaurants). Custom fitted flat frequency earplugs are the perfect help for these situations, I always carry them in pocket just in case.

Would you expound on this a little and perhaps mention some brands? I also have issues following discussions in those kinds of environments. I can hear the people talking, but it blends into the background noise and becomes very difficult to isolate the actual words.

Etymotic Research

https://www.etymotic.com/

Sure. My plugs are Elacin ER. I walked into a hearing aid/protection shop and got a mold of my ear canals made. Plugs were made to match the mold, took a couple of weeks and about 200€. Noise reduction is done with an exchangeable filter with different options for reduction levels, I'm using 25dB.

Not the cheapest but if you don't lose them the should last a decade.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

Thank you very much!

On a motorcycle, earplugs are a necessity at speeds over 35 MPH due to wind noise. I've found that the earplugs really only cut out the wind noise for the most part though and if anything, my awareness of other cars is increased.

> At least in most of the usa, wearing earplugs (or earbuds, headphones, etc) while operating a car, is illegal. Please check with your local PD to be safe. You may just be putting yourself and others at higher risk by attinuating your situational awareness.

Actually, it seems like it's legal in most states? [0] Unless your local municpal code says differently.

[0]: https://drivinglaws.aaa.com/tag/headsets/

Proper situational awareness while driving is a visual task. As people age, they begin to lose hearing and ability to localize sounds due to age and noise exposure. Leaning on hearing for safety becomes a liability.

That’s incredibly narrow-minded. You’re not “leaning on hearing”. You’re using all the information you can get. Hearing is vital.

How else would you know an ambulance is around the corner, about to run a red light? There are things you simply cannot see, no matter how hard you look.

Emergency response drivers never assume they've been heard by any road users and are trained to look for signs of acknowledgement and awareness before doing anything unusual for exactly this reason. They certainly don't blast at speed around blind corners against the lights.

On the other hand driving schools in Europe sometimes make us drive with construction safety devices in order to check if we can drive without hearing anything. They also obstruct the middle mirror (you're supposed to be able to drive with just side mirrors).

As a European with a drivers license this is news to me.

Not even all schools in my country do that, it's nothing standard, just something some schools around me do (and it's encouraged by the police). However I think it's illustrative of the car culture. The center mirror thing is done by all schools though.

When I was learning to drive, my biggest complaint was that I couldn't hear the engine when there was noise in the area - it was a very quiet one. It made it harder to do hill starts and clutch balancing. Now I drive a diesel.

At low speeds, driving around car parks etc, the ear plugs are out and usually have all the windows at least partly open, because I’m those environments hearing can be a huge boost to situational awareness.

I find above 40k/hr my hearing is better with ear plugs because it attenuates the road, wind, and engine noise more for me.

How can it be? Is driving deaf illegal there as well?

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