Originally Posted by
Smaug1
One other thing you might try is riding with ear plugs.
I use
Cat-Ears always, and on windy days I also wear ear plugs. For you, maybe it isn't the wind as much as train & traffic noise. They attenuate what you hear by around 20-25 dB, but you can still hear everything you need to. Our ears/brain boost our hearing up to accommodate, rather than creating street in dealing with excessively loud noise.
You can still hear everything you need to in traffic. Conversation can be a bit difficult at times on a group ride, but traffic sounds are no problem.
I wear Apple Airpods Pro with the noise cancellation enabled. You could argue I shouldn't do that, and you might be right, but it's what I do. And yes, it's the sounds of traffic and especially trains. Our trains are of the old designs, not made with noise in mind at all. They are horrifically loud. And I've become more sensitive as my hearing decays. I've come to understand that a hearing loss isn't like everything turned down. Background noise is turned up to the same level as foreground sounds.