I understand that some may not have the best hearing in the world. Shoot, my own hearing in my left ear is not as good as the right anymore because I was too stubborn in my younger days to wear hearing protection near the flight deck! Many of us drive with medically excusable forms of hearing loss that has been deemed okay by a medical professional. What strikes me as truly idiotic is the increasing number of drivers out there that I encounter on the road that choose to operate when blocking out all of their hearing on purpose. The growing problem I am encountering has nothing to do with medical conditions, but rather the use of ear buds and headphones in both ears while driving a commercial vehicle!
In a normal and safe scenario, it serves a special purpose to be able to hear what is going on around you while driving around one of these beasts. The first thing that comes to my mind, is that I want to be able to hear sirens and horns of emergency vehicles when they are approaching. Second, I like to be able to hear the operation of my own truck, which can alert me to any signs that something might be wrong. It is all too often that I see a sirens and lights in local intersections, but growing in popularity are the number of people I encounter having close calls because they don't hear the warning signs. I would love to have these people imagine their loved one in an ambulance rolling code-3, only to realize it didn't make it to the hospital because it was side-swiped by a person in an intersection that didn't hear the sirens blaring as it approached because they bumping their tunes in their headphones!
It takes every one of our five senses to operate a commercial vehicle safely. If even one of those is missing, it makes a huge impact on our ability to operate safely. It astounds me that someone would choose to cut out the sounds around him or her while in operation for any reason, especially to talk to someone or to listen to music! It is not just isolated to the four-wheeler community either, as I see big truck drivers doing it as well. As hard as it is to enforce, I think more attention should be given to the issue and that other technologies be utilized such as Bluetooth through the speakers. Take a look around on your next trip and let me know what you see in regards to this growing trend.