I am not one to foist upon others my moral beliefs. i just note in California, it is illegal to wear headphones. As to music, I love the so called adult contemporary artists such as Sarah McLaughlin, Anne Lennox, Del Amitri, Concrete Blonde, Tom Petty and so on.
As I said under the thread, 3 best songs ever- only thing I miss about bike commuting is missing my favorite independent radio station.
So, since I will not commute with headphones and prefer bike commuting over driving- guess I miss my bike more than my music.
I understand those who like to combine their favorite music with biking, but to me it would detract from my ride. Each to their own.
God, please never let me experience a cyclist with a blaster similiar to those on motorcycles playing some metalic rap. I hate being forced to hear others crappy music.

I listen to the radio all the time when cycling, last Saturday for instance my ears were glued to the radio when I listened to the Royal Wedding of Prince William-Alexander and the new Princess Máxima. I'm not even such a royalty-watcher!
the trick is to listen with just one ear when you're on roads with more traffic (only right ear) and there is an earphone which has only one ear phone bud.. the other unused part would invariably fall down and get into the spokes to be chopped off.

It's safer to listen to news & talk radio... however when I would be training I'd probably be better off with music, but I am afraid it will drown out the traffic noise.. so don't really like that..
Having a mirror on the helmet is a better way to avoid problems than 'listening' to traffic.. in that case music would be fine.. I've lost my mirror and haven't replaced it yet..so I'm more careful again.
So, what about a mp3 player.. taking tapes or cds would bore me silly with just 12 songs at most.. I want to have an option to listen to 100s of songs .... in June i'll be riding a 600K ride, so need some inspiration for pacing myself!

I confess to having assumed headphones were dangerous on bikes without further investigation. Inspired by this thread (that and a degree of time whilst waiting for some tedious reports to run), I had a browse to see whether there was much else on the net regarding this.

There doesn't appear to be any statistical studies published on the subject so drawing conclusions as to how dangerous it is (or isn't) from accident statistics isn't possible (there is of course also the problem that relatively few cycling accidents are reported, and ascertaining cause or even contributory factors in an accident isn't always easy).

All I found was that various bodies, either legislate against wearing of headphones or recommend against them whilst using a vehicle of one form or another.

The article Allister provided a link to is the most interesting I found, and I think it certainly suggests that the perceived danger of cycling with headphones is probably exaggerated, but as the writer concludes:

"I agree that headphones (or any other extraneous sound source) can sometimes affect the safety of bicycle operation. I think that it is important for a bicyclist to think carefully about when to use headphones, and I certainly don't encourage playing them loudly. "

Any sound that may mask another is potentially dangerous to a cyclist, and music from headphones can logically be no exception. I think what is debatable is the degree of increased risk listening to music has, and my guess would be that it's fairly low, if the music is played at a relatively low level. How often you are likely to be in a situation when a shouted warning might have prevented you having an accident? - Probably not very often. Some of us have heard a car dropping gear behind us as a junction approached and believe we may have prevented a left/right hook by reacting to it, but we can't say that if we had been wearing headphones we wouldn't have heard it with 100% certainty, or that an accident would have occured had we not reacted.

I don't think it is possible to argue that listening to music whilst wearing headphones is without any risk, but that risk may be quite small. Personally I've no wish to wear headphones, but I can understand why people do.

Richard

Add me to the list of miscreants that ride with headphones, but only on commutes. I like to listen to recorded books rather than music or radio. I ride with glasses-mounted mirror, which helps offset the reduced hearing.

Hey! I don't even have a cell phone, so we won't go there.

When you ride the bike, ride the bike. When you listen to music, listen to the music. When you eat, eat. Mindfulness.

Are you saying that you can't listen to music while you eat?

I have tried listening to a walkman while commuting, but found the bother of clipping the player on to me outweighed the pleasure of the music (classical guitar & flamenco). I dont think safety was an issue because the music didnt block out other sounds.