“This is another question. This one, is it illegal to drive with headphones on, and with headphones, I’m including big headphones, little wire earplug things and the earbuds that you can hardly see.
Okay, they’re all great ways to listen to music or a podcast or a radio station or something. You get away from the outside world and you’re listening to your favourite music or a story or an audio book or whatever, it’s great!
But, whilst driving, they’re removing your awareness of your surroundings. You can’t hear the car very well, the engine you can’t hear funny noises that shouldn’t be there, you can’t hear rattles and groans from the car that shouldn’t be there. So, therefore, you can’t hear when something is wrong. You can’t hear warning signs from the car telling you ‘Hey you’ve got a tyre losing pressure, hey you’ve got a door open, hey you’ve got something wrong, an oil warning, a buzz or something.’
So all of that, you’re oblivious to. Similarly, you can’t hear the sound of emergency vehicles that the rest of us can hear because we haven’t got the ear plugs in. So you are taking away a big chunk of awareness and that is information. Without information, you are very greatly disadvantaged. So it’s a distraction that could potentially cause a crash or cause you to exceed a speed limit or cause you to take a wrong turn or miss a road sign or spot a cyclist or spot a pedestrian or a red light or whatever.
So, the alternative is have the radio, CD, media player or whatever have it on in the car control, the volume to a reasonable level, but don’t put things in or around your ears. You need to hear what’s around you in your surroundings and be aware, keep your awareness to a high level that keeps you safe.”
