I’ve never ridden a motorcycle aside from a very short distance as a passenger in my youth, but it seems like it would be really difficult to hear anything at all through the helmet and over the noise of the bike itself anyway.
It’s apparently legal in my state, but I had to look it up because it’s never occurred to me to try. We’re fortunate enough that both our family cars are fairly new, so they’re both bluetooth-enabled, but in the past, I’ve used an aux cable, a usb drive, and even one of those weird accessories you pop into a cassette deck to get music.
Maybe your car does that. Mine eats the cassette to phone converters. I listen to audiobooks on one earbud. I put it in the bad ear to leave the good ear available.
I work in car audio for an OEM and I have brought this up many times when we consider if car audio is a safety issue, like the sound level of audio chimes and whether or not there are federal regulations relating to them. The fact is that deaf people are considered handicapped and know not to depend on audio signals for information, which is why all safety related information also has visual signals that are regulated. Non-deaf people are idiots and rely on audio signals, but are also covered by the visual information. This saves me a lot of work by not having to validate audio signals to a FMVSS regualtion.
Still, I would never even consider wearing headphones while driving.
Aside from being illegal in California, it’s IMO seriously stupid to not be able to hear things like emergency vehicles in the vicinity, other vehicles too close, etc.
It’s common, but far from universal yet. And if you have passengers, it means everyone has to listen to the same thing.
I know I’m not supposed to, but I do use earbuds to listen to audiobooks (or, occasionally, GPS directions) at a level that does not block out external sounds like sirens or horns (even though I can’t remember the last time there actually was a siren or horn I needed to hear while driving—it happens, but it’s rare).
Sometimes when I’m biking around my community I wear one ear bud which (I think) allows me to hear whatever’s on my Phone (typically a podcast) okay while I can still hear anything I need to hear with the other ear.
I don’t own any such devices, and while I drive, I have the radio on, mostly for background noise. I’d hate to be oblivious to an emergency vehicle blaring a siren because of headphones, especially on the 2-lane country roads around here.
I’m hearing impaired and so I wear hearing aids when I’m outside the house. They connect to my cell phone by BT for both control of the hearing profile and for any audio. This means that I have a “voice in my head” when I use map apps or making and taking calls while driving. Notifications and texts also come through.
This is actually a bit distracting, especially when my wife is telling me something and I get a big, “In 500 feet, turn left on Maple Street,” in both ears. But I’ve not had any problems yet hearing sirens, horns, etc.
OTOH, I amaze my friends and family when I drive in a strange city and I’m cruising through the turns downtown with zero errors and hesitation.
In California, it is illegal to cover both ears, but one is fine.
My car connects to the bluetooth, but my wife’s does not (well, it connects to her phone; it could connect to mine too, but fiddling woth two paired phones becomes a headache in her car’s menu). So if I’m driving her car, I’ll put one ear bud in.
I’ll also do that if I’m driving with the kids and they are asleep, in either car.
Yes, that is what I do, and what many other riders do. Earplugs are really a necessary part of the safety equipment on motorcycles. The noise, particularly wind noise at higher speeds, is damaging over time.[1] The earplugs I prefer reduce the sound by 20-22 dB.
There are a few mitigating factors. At low speeds I can still hear other cars and stuff, just not as loud as without the earplugs. They seem to me to be similar to riding in a luxury car with lots of sound insulation. You can still hear a siren, but the tire noise from the car next to you is greatly diminished. At high speeds not much can be heard over the wind noise without the earplugs, so I feel the plugs increase my ability to hear ambient noise.
I don’t think the helmet speakers are any worse than a car stereo in diminishing outside sounds. At high speed the volume of the speakers (or car stereo) have to be turned up to overcome increased ambient sound. At low speed, the volume can be turned down enough that outside noise is audible.
I’ve always thought hearing damage is one of the reasons many like loud pipes, they can only hear the excessively loud ones. ↩︎
I can connect my phone but not my MP3 player (I mostly using it for running as it’s much smaller & lighter than a phone) as you’re required to enter a pairing code & there’s no way to do that on the MP3 player.
The car has a ‘Sirius’ button but it must have only been activated with a higher trim level as pushing it doesn’t do anything.
There is an override setting in maps to not play voice prompts thru bluetooth but the only way the phone will speak directions over the speakers is if I’m also on a phone call.
Hmmm, so you almost never hear sirens or horns? Do you live in a very rural area or do you just not realize what all you’re missing?
In anything other than tooling around town running errands in the 'vert & in long (hundreds of miles) rides in nice weather (ie. windows down) in the SUV I wear foam earplugs as I find the wind noise to be too much & causes ear discomfort after some time; I just turn the radio up louder to hear it.
My car has the ability to interface with my phone, so not while driving that. At work it depends on the vehicle and if I’m driving more than an hourish at a time. Some of the work vehicles have blue tooth or auxcord capabilities and some don’t. I don’t actually know the legality of headphones while driving, but phone use is illegal unless it is hands-free generally, with severe consequences if caught using nonhand-free cell phone while driving commercially specifically. This is for both driver and company.
I don’t turn the volume up high enough to block out ambient sound.
Illegal in my state, but I’ve had one in to hear my phone’s GPS when driving with my top down. I wonder how often people are ticketed for this. If I’m pulled over for speeding/headlight out/whatever, as I pull over I’m going to pull the bud out.
Honestly, between my car stereo and how much quieter cars are today than they were thirty years ago, it’s not like I hear a lot of what’s going on anyway. Though do still hear sirens.
One example: old article I read about truck drivers, the picture illustrating it had the driver tooling along at night while his co-driver slept. He had old school full coverage headphones, both to not annoy the co-driver but probably to also mute the exhaust noise. Even at the time (1974) I wondered if that was legal.
Either way, when I’m out in the country I have the stereo cranked, so I still couldn’t hear a lot. But I keep my eyes wide open all the time.