Driving with ear plugs

My wife swears up and down I'm deaf as a post, but my last hearing test shows I hear great.

The problem, besides the tinnitus (thankfully it sounds exactly like crickets) is the fact loud noise causes my eardrums to stiffen up and reduce ALL sound to nothing but white noise.

Now, couple that with excellent pitch discrimination, you get my problem: lots of loud noise effectively deafens me; and small tiny noise changes at night when i'm sleeping (ceiling fan develops a click, or my wife and dog snore) will wake me up.


So I wear earplugs. I should wear the while driving,maybe that's next.

But I can hear the alarm thru them just fine, or my wife when she wakes me. And cutting them down reduces the attenuation, so that van work in a cab while driving.

 

Humor: go get yourself a batch.

 

You're right, I should not have said that but your statement looked as though you were attacking him for being old. I apologize and have corrected it.

 

It is against the law in a lot if not all states to wear muffs over both ears. That is why blue tooth is ok. I would wager that ear buds are against the law also if so then ear plugs would be illegal to. Talking on a cell phone while driving is against the law but I still see it about every day when I working. Ear plugs would be hard for a leo to see especially if they were skin toned.

 

You cant have both ears pluged on a bike a car or a truck. Just call the DOT they will say the same. One ear is fine but both is a no no.

 

I wear ear plugs from time to time to drown out the continuous noise of the truck and road noise. My tablet shows it is a consistent 90 db in the truck at highway speed.

According to http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/loudness.html hearing loss can occur at sustained exposure of 90 to 95 db.

Legal or not, I don't care. I'm wearing them and take them out when I think I need to.

 

I'm not going to say if it's legal or not because I will not just quote what I feel should be. I would not do that because I drive with all my senses and when I'm on surface streets (off the interstate) I turn the radio off and crack the window. I want to hear everything especially emergency vehicles. It's just a safety issue with me because I spent most all of my time on city streets with gasoline and I would use everything I could to make it safe or safer.

However, I would say a little common sense here goes a long way. I would hate for DOT to see me with ear plugs in. I would think if they wanted to they could disqualify me if I didn't meet the standards for the medical certificate then force me to get recertified to drive a CMV again. I would look at the problem real closely. I'm sure we all know that your medical certificate is no good if you develop a medical condition that disqualifies you after you get your medical card.

 

Just imagine how hard of hearing these 20 year old punks are gonna be in a few years after all the abuse they are doing to their ears now. The super loud headphones and speakers that masquerade as cars they drive.

 

My ears ring all the time from a factory job I used to have so now,I do wear earplugs while driving the truck.Yes,I take them off before a scales or if & when I get stopped just because we all know how DOT & Cops can be.