Keep your eyes on the road. While this may be sound advice, how about your other senses? Your ears, for instance, are doing a lot of work while you’re driving, helping you track other vehicles, alerting you to information on your dashboard, and keeping you connected with the other passengers in your vehicle.
So when you experience hearing loss, the way you drive can vary. That doesn’t inevitably mean you will need to quit driving because you’ve become overly dangerous. Inexperience and distracted driving are bigger liabilities when it comes to safety. Nevertheless, some specific precautions need to be taken by individuals with hearing loss to ensure they keep driving as safely as possible.
Developing good driving habits can go a long way to help you drive safely even if hearing impairment may be influencing your situational awareness.
How your driving may be effected by hearing loss
In general, driving is a vision-centered task (at least, if it’s not a vision-centric activity, something’s wrong). Even full-blown hearing loss most likely won’t keep you from driving, but it very likely could change the way you drive. After all, you use your hearing a lot while you’re driving. Some typical examples include:
- If another driver needs to make you aware of their presence, they will often use their horn. If you fail to see the light turn to green, for instance, or you begin to wander into the other lane, a horn can get your attention before it becomes a problem.
- Even though most vehicles are engineered to decrease road noise, your sense of hearing can add to your awareness of other vehicles. You will typically be able to hear an oncoming truck, for example.
- If has any damage, your sense of hearing can alert you to it. If your engine is rapping or you have an exhaust leak, for example.
- Audible alerts will sound when your car is attempting to alert you to something, such as an unbuckled seat belt or an open door.
- Emergency vehicles can often be heard before they can be seen.
By using all of these audio cues, you will be building stronger situational awareness. You may begin to miss more and more of these audio cues as your hearing loss progresses. But you can take some positive steps to keep your driving as safe as possible.
Developing new safe driving habits
If you’re dealing with hearing loss and you want to keep driving, that’s fine! Stay safe out on the road using these tips:
- Pay extra attention to your mirrors: Even with sirens blaring, you may not hear that ambulance coming up behind you. So make sure you aren’t neglecting your mirrors. And keep the possible presence of emergency vehicles in mind.
- Put your phone away: Well, this is good advice whether you have hearing loss or not. Phones are among the leading causes of distraction on the road these days. And that goes double when you attempt to use them when you have hearing loss. Keeping your phone stowed can, simply, keep you safer–and save your life.
- Don’t neglect your dash lights: Usually, your car will beep or ding when you need to look at your instrument panel for something. So you’ll want to make sure you glance down (when it’s safe) and make sure your turn signals aren’t still blinking, or your check engine light isn’t on.
- Keep the noise inside your car to a minimum: Hearing loss will make it difficult for your ears to separate noises. It will be easy for your ears to get overwhelmed and for you to get distracted if you have passengers loudly speaking and music playing and wind in your ears. So when you’re driving, it’s a smart idea to reduce the volume on your radio, keep conversation to a minimum, and roll up your windows.
Keeping your hearing aid ready for the road
If you have hearing loss, driving is one of those instances where wearing a hearing aid can really help. And when you’re driving, utilize these tips to make your hearing aids a real asset:
- Have us dial in a driving setting for you: We can program a car setting into your hearing aid if you do a lot of driving. The size of the inside of your vehicle and the fact that your passengers will be talking to you from the side or rear will be the factors we will use to fine tune this “car setting” for smoother safer driving.
- Every time you drive, use your hearing aid: It won’t help you if you don’t use it! So every time you drive, be sure you’re wearing your hearing aids. By doing this, your brain will have an easier time getting used to the incoming sounds.
- Keep your hearing aids clean, charged, and updated: When you’re on your way to the store, the last thing you need is for your battery to die. That can be distracting and perhaps even dangerous. So keep your batteries charged and make sure everything’s working properly.
Hearing loss doesn’t mean driving is a problem, particularly with hearing aids which make it safer and easier. Establishing good driving habits can help guarantee that your drive is pleasant and that your eyes remain safely on the road.
