I wear headphones to help me ignore people like rfomenko.

Does playing "chicken" qualify as "face to face"? Doesn't happen every week or even every month but it happens from time to time. Is winning such encounters qualify me as a "tough guy"? But the previous poster is certainly right. Such conversations rarely occur outside of the cyberspace. Self-preservation at work, isn't it?

Just saying it does not make it true. Neither does challenging me to wager on it.

Show me some numbers.
In my search for some statistics on bike-car accidents in which headphones were involved, I found this:
https://www.bikexprt.com/bicycle/hearing.htm
It has some interesting science about how inaccurate our hearing really is.

When I used to say "Hi" or nod to them in the past, I would not get a reply in about 90% of the time. That's why I stopped. What would you do? Where is the contradiction?
I do not care about the headphones one way or another with the exception of the fact that I do not like to be lumped into the same category with the clueless cyclists who annoy the car drivers by lumbering all over the road & not hearing a car/truck five feet away behind them that is just trying to pass by. I have to deal with the same drivers, you know?

huh?

and uke, you can't get better entertainment than this. You may want to ignore him at first but you don't know what you'll be missing.

I doubt you dislike being lumped into that category any more than I dislike being lumped into that same category just because I wear headphones. The symptoms you describe above are likely statisically unrelated to the wearing of headphones at a reasonable volume.

Just because a cyclist does not cowardly yeild the lane when a passing car is approaching does not mean that he did not hear it. It is not always safe or practical to do so.

My guess is that the evidence would show that listening to headphones has almost no impact on the type of weaving you describe. In fact, in my case, headphones played at a reasonable level actually improve my hearing of road noises as they cut the deafening wind noise. I could certainly see how someone who has no experience cycling with headphones would not believe that.....but it does not make it any less true.

Unfortunately, the majority of lawmakers in this country seem to think (as you seem to think), that opinion and emotion are adequate substitutes for empiracle evidence when creating policy to impact the freedom of others.

I once had a Business Law professor that would start almost every class by saying "NEVER FORGET THAT EMOTION, NOT FACTS, DRIVES THE REGULATORY CYCLE".

https://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-safety/444721-coroner-links-mp3-player-cyclists-death.html

Nice!

You make lots of sense & could be right even though I seriously doubt it. I'm sure that there are some studies about it with all-important statistics thrown in. I do not know how music works on others but with me it invokes certain imagery that different from the surrounding reality. Especially if the music is from some soundtrack. And that certainly doesn't help.
It feels so good to be lumped with the politicians for a change. Perhaps I'll run for an office real soon
And your law professor is 100% right.

Huh? Can't take a joke anymore? Succumbed to political correctness? Never watched late George Carlin?

How I ride in traffic is sometimes based on auditory cues that I hear. For example, big engine or a truck/bus coming up, I'll move closer to the right as well as look over my shoulders to see what is coming. When it's a howling engine pushing high RPM's, I will pull over and check what it is coming up behind me. Once in awhile, you'll also get the, "On your left" to indicate another rider wanting to pass. Whatever it is, from brake squeal to engine noise, I find it useful to hear my surroundings.

I thought about using an iPod during my rides but never bothered. I do use my iPods when I jog but that's either on a track or a treadmill.

I have a pair of Etymotics ER-4 isolating earphones. They are essentially 30dB earplugs that pipe sound through them. (They are _highly_ useful when travelling by plane - screaming babies cease to exist.) I wear them walking but have to be careful even then, since all external sound is blocked. It's amazing to me how many auditory clues I get from the outside. I think these would be far too risky for the bike, but that's my opinion. (I have thought about using regular iPod earbuds and turning them on low, but I haven't tried it.) I think the problem with these is that the sound is so involving and all-encompassing in your head that it's hard to concentrate with the reflexes you need.

Incidentally, I've tried using them while driving (just a brief distance). There's a big difference between having the stereo up even fairly loud in the car and having these things in your ears blocking out all external sounds and filling your head with music. I found it far more difficult than I would have expected to judge where I was relative to other cars on the road. My uninformed guess is that this might relate to the role of hearing to orientation, but someone with more knowlege of this can maybe elaborate.

Jersey pocket.

You forgot to mention that I bale babies with a pitch fork.

I got 30+ years commuting in traffic that, along with your two silly posts, pretty much bears out that I was correct...you are a peckerwood!

Thing is, riding with buds and music does not make you deaf (well it might if you crank it too loud!). THAT is the dirty little secret that the safety nannies won't share because they are long on opinions and short on actual experience.

If the sense of sound perception is so important to operating a vehicle in traffic, why are there not literally thousands of car accidents daily due to the fact that drivers cannot hear anything outside of their steel cage, for the most part? Yes, some sense of sound is a definite requirement (to detect emergency vehicles for example), but listening to music at a reasonable level does not take your hearing below the minimum levels required...if it did, auto sound systems would be illegal and the deaf/hearing impaired would not be allowed to operate vehicles, don't you think?

So you are one of those nannies who believe the deaf an hearing impaired should be barred from operating vehicles. Good thing that even most clueless politicians have more common sense than you do...or at least a fear of the ADA lobby, so have not passed silly laws to support your silly theories. The phony arguments are all yours, pal...but if that is what you need to believe you are not inferior to the rest of the world, have at it.

It bears out exactly nothing. This is not the court of law, it's only a forum, remember? All in your head pal, all in your head. Though it is increasingly likely that you are either a small town hick or a backward dork. Or perhaps a democratic combination of both

Nice try, peckerwood...obviously your phony assumptions about me are no more accurate that you phony arguments about riding with music. Keep typing, the court of common sense convicted you pages ago!

Repeatedly saying that my arguments are ridiculous without refuting them doesn't make them untrue. It just makes you a good pupil of Dr. Joseph Goebbels. Same thing about you imaginary "court of common sense" and its "convictions". I can't care less even if it was true. As for calling me names goes, I tried to respond in kind but really shouldn't have stooped to this level. And for that I am sorry. Take care pal.

Perhaps if you used Mr. Eye and Mr. Brain to read through and understand many of the posts, including my own, in this thread, you might see that your attempts at phony arguments have been thoroughly refuted already.

Your original post in this thread set the tone, so please spare us the crocodile tears, m'kay. If you wanna come off as a peckerwood, don't be surprised when you get treated as one.

I'm not expecting anything new in this thread, so I decided to just quote a post from the first page...

I mentioned it in another thread, but a rider doesn't need to be traveling at 20 mph to get that amount of wind noise. Going 10 mph into a 10 mph headwind gives you an airspeed of 20 mph; same with all the gusts & crosswinds. The quietest riding is when you get a tailwind.

I decided to try some ER20 earplugs (no music, just plugs) that I got at work, and I was really surprised. The ride itself was a lot more peaceful, and I don't remember being surprised by anything that I hadn't already seen in my mirror or by looking around.

If I change lanes, it's usually behind a cluster of vehicles, and I'm trying to not swerve in front of any stragglers that are twenty or thirty yards back. I will never be able to hear them, however, because the cluster is making a lot of noise already, masking anything that's behind me.

So, I figured that since my ears are pretty useless in traffic anyway, it's not a problem if I try to keep the noise down.

Even unimpeded, I don't think that we can trust our ears enough, especially since our lives depend on not getting hit by anything. We should always do a visual check. With OR without silent earplugs or music earphones, ride like you're deaf.

(the funny thing is, the first time I rode with earplugs was the first in a long time that people wanted to talk to me on the street... well, they were asking for directions, but I thought it was ironically funny )

I tried some of those noise canceling earbuds to cut down on wind noise but they made me feel like I had a head cold. I suspect earplugs would be similar.

Thank you for that. It was my original point. The plugs alone (not getting into the music debate here, since I'm not doing music) reduce, but do not eliminate, sound. For me, that increases my personal safety factor. I am more visually observant, and I don't go scurrying towards a curb just because someone down the street is firing up their giant truck or Harley.

Not sure how this thread turned into a big machismo show-down. Maybe some folks should just get a thread just for a big smack-down, and then really go for it. I'd watch!

Don't waste money on noise-canceling products; the best earphones and headphones for isolation rely on sealing the ear canal/external ear respectively. And with regard to earplugs and canalphones, you can get models molded to fit your ear shape for comfort, if desired.

Personally, I use these canalphones for listening to music when walking, riding, or using the laptop. Work nicely at reducing outside noise once they're settled in my ears, which allows me to listen at lower volumes without damaging my hearing.

However, they don't fully block out external noises (in fact, no phones/muffs are capable of doing so); it's simply a matter of degree. I'm getting a pair of shooting range muffs tomorrow to allow me to study in the living room while my family's watching TV.

I find no problem with earplugs, earbuds, headphones, or anything else that interferes with hearing, as long as the cyclist is still able to ride responsibly and safely.

however I do not quite understand why someone would want less hearing becuase what they hear scares them. I think the OP needs more confidence rather than less hearing.

The danger level of a situation is not determined by your awareness of it. blocking out the sound will not make it anymore or less safe to be on the road. If you are confident riding on the roads with out being aware of the sounds, you should realize that it isnt any different when you are aware of the sounds. I simply think the OP would be better off learning to deal with the sounds with out fear rather then blocking them out.