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A question of safety.


John Chew

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2 hours ago, Planemo said:

Police response drivers are taught, in fact its drilled into them, to assume that all drivers are deaf.

Interesting, it seems to make perfectly sense to me, how do you know this?

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4 hours ago, mike_bike_kite said:

If someone is deaf then that's not their fault and they certainly aren't negligent. It's a different thing If you purposefully make yourself deaf by wearing headphones and listening to loud music (as happened here).

What if I suffer from anxiety and therefore I have to listen to loud music to be able to go out of my home?

What if I listened to loud music all my life and am deaf as a consequence of this?

4 hours ago, mike_bike_kite said:

... if you're driving then it [self-inflicted hearing impairment] puts everyone else's safety at risk ...

I understand your point, and it were a sustainable point if being deaf were actually a threat when entering public roads. There seems to be a wide consensus though that hearing, in contrast to seeing, is not necessary to drive safely. That's why your point that self-inflicted hearing impairment automatically implies careless driving is difficult to defend ;) It would be a different story if the guy had been blindfolded :D

6 minutes ago, mike_bike_kite said:

They all moved over because they could  "hear" the sirens.

There is no way how you could possibly know the reason why they pulled over. They could also have seen all the police cars or seen other people pull over or listen to the radio (where it was announced, OK, that's far fetched) or...

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I honestly think this is going nowhere guys. I appreciate that you like to ride with headphones and believe it to be fine. I also understand that you guys are probably way safer with your headphones on than I am as a beginner without headphones. I guess we'll know what the law thinks if the EUC rider takes the police to court. I guess we'll also know what the EUC rider thinks if he doesn't take them to court.

 

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47 minutes ago, mike_bike_kite said:

I honestly think this is going nowhere guys.

Agreed, there is a broad and stable consensus that hearing may help, but is not necessary to drive safely.

47 minutes ago, mike_bike_kite said:

I guess we'll also know what the EUC rider thinks if he doesn't take them to court.

There is no way we could possible know what the EUC rider thinks. There are far too many reasons for not going to court to even make some reasonable guesses of the actual reason ;)

Edited by Mono
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17 hours ago, mike_bike_kite said:

I appreciate that you like to ride with headphones and believe it to be fine.

Personally I never ride wearing headphones. I don’t feel comfortable riding with music, since I feel I need to focus on my surroundings 100%. Listening to my favourite songs would take my mind to other places, which indeed might make me ride carelessly. And I want to hear the surface I’m riding on, the stress level of my wheel, my speed from the tire noise, if my wheel develops strange sounds, and if a bambi starts running in the bushes during a night ride.

17 hours ago, mike_bike_kite said:

I guess we'll know what the law thinks if the EUC rider takes the police to court. I guess we'll also know what the EUC rider thinks if he doesn't take them to court.

To me it sounds obvious that the EUC rider that was hit by a police car (and the guitar dude as well) were behaving recklessly and carelessly in traffic, and both would be likewise judged in court. But listening to music can’t be punished. Not looking around before crossing a street can.

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Sticking something in your ears to completely block out your surroundings (loud sirens) is reckless.  If our community chooses to defend reckless behavior by its peers, the future of riding free will be in peril.  If the EUC rider was to win a court case, municipalities could feel pressure to legislate against us.  If the EUC rider loses a court case, municipalities will still feel pressure to legislate against us.  In other words, even if the EUC wins the battle, they lose the war.  I feel like there's a meme in there somewhere!

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2 hours ago, soundkite said:

Sticking something in your ears to completely block out your surroundings (loud sirens) is reckless.

Call it what you want but its not illegal, so cant be used against you as evidence if thats all they've got.

21 hours ago, Mono said:

Interesting, it seems to make perfectly sense to me, how do you know this?

I was a response driver for 10 years.

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