Does One Need Hearing In Both Ears To Drive Professionally OTR to All 48 States & Canada?

Typical medical exam in Canada:

-Read eye chart
-Checks peripheral vision
-Blood pressure check
-Signs paperwork and off you go. Takes about 10 minutes.

 

In Washington state they test commercial drivers who are completely deaf with sign language interpreters. The pretrip is done by writing. Not sure about the rest of the world but I am sure of that.

 

I’ve learned not to say no they can’t do that as states sometimes have a mind of their own. I suspect though that a state can do as they want with an intrastate exempted CDL. I’ve seen firsthand a state doing as they wanted for long periods before being told to stop. The Feds however do have an exemption for the deaf which is very limited. AFAIK they have only allowed a few exemptions for Class B CDLs w/o AB.

 

My father in law (who doesn't drive for a living) is deaf in his left ear. Just happened over the last three years. He recently had a procedure done where, basically they drilled a hole in his skull, and put a special corkscrew looking thing in his head. Then he has a device that snaps on the corkscrew thing, which is like a microphone, and transfers the noise vibration into his skull, and he's able to hear again. It's also connected to his smartphone somehow, and I'm not real sure what that does. But it works, and once his hair grows back, you won't be able to see it.

 

That is a pipe dream everywhere else.

People who convert sign language to and from whatever language required are about 20 dollars a hour to start.

I can safely say I have never seen anyone capable of using Sign Language involved in trucking in any capacity, least of all testing and orientation stuff. That just does not exist.

If the money is so good as a interperter, why don't I do it? Well.. you are getting into a very particular part of language called accent or even particular regional differences in both syntax and terms. I am taught traditional English as brought by LeCleric and Galludet to America in the Colonial Times to break the UK limitations of that language which was strictly a trade secret and just enough of it taught to deaf people there to keep them enslaved in workshops. That language here in America represents freedom.

Fast forward to today's deaf culture. You have now what is called American Sign Language a totally unique and living language capable of taking and teaching words to anyone in a particular form. If I tried to (And have...) communicate in ASL, I would be constantly corrected until enough of the old English disappears and I learn the local words as it were. I can still make myself understood but it is obvious to anyone who is native to ASL that I was taught and trained differently. And have to be constantly retrained as well as teaching the ASL person what I use so that a common ground is reached. Then we can begin to talk about whatever it is we wanted to talk about. That is how I learned to add ASL to my existing English structure. It's not pretty. So when there are three languages running about it's can be a mess.

What is good in Arkansas would need some correcting in Maryland and vice versa. Or anywhere to anywhere in just the USA states. Every area has it's unique differences in language.

Never mind the bits of spanish or french or something else needed for Mexico and Canada. You learn just enough to get by in trucking if you go that far out.

There are certain parts of the world who make use of the Deaf and our Languages well enough. Take Israel. There is a section of their IDF, the Military that uses them. Our own military refuses to touch them with a ten foot pole. (They are missing out...) That is one example.

Trucking I suppose at some point will adopt sign language and deaf people more common in the future but I will not be alive to see it. There are technologies being invented where at some point when perfected will convert spoken language fast enough into flowing sign language for the deaf and vice versa to speak whatever machine language is required for communication to take place.

However.

The deaf culture labors under extreme problems related to freedom in our society. For every one of me who managed to "Escape" and make my own living, get married, buy and sell a house own property and do the things I wanted to do there are a number of deaf who will never be able to do these things in life. And that is the problem. They have to get by on scraps left them on the table by the legislature of whatever state they are in.

Washington state may be special in having all that. It would be news to me. But to get the rest of the USA to do that? HA... not going to happen for a long time for a variety of reasons. It would be a change to be sure.

There is one thing a deaf person has that anyone who is NOT does not have. Eyesight capable of picking out the smallest of clues in the entire environment in visual range. Just walking up to a tractor trailer that is soft on at least one wheel causing it to lean just a little bit off is noticeable for example. And being able to read a developing situation fast enough to get ahead of it and work around it before the truck has a chance to get away is another thing.

I can go on. But for the industry to accept sign language as part of trucking? It's simply not going to happen for years to come. There is literally not enough deaf for drivers as a pool of resource from which you can hire and train to make the expenses of doing that worth while. Not for a good long time yet.

And I cannot even begin to introduce differences in National languages. If I went to England, Canada, Germany, Israel, or wherever else outside of the USA, there will be a total amount of time lost just learning the local language (And vice versa them learning American...) before anything meaningful can be communicated. But at some point in a unknown future, that will mesh into one common language that is good globally. (International Sign Language... there are parts of it usable even today anywhere.

Finally but not least. Looking at technology that allows you to use the Internet to understand any language or make yourself understood to any has been a break through. In gaming over the years Google Translate is a example of this. Someone writing in french, german, russian or whatever.. gets converted to english rough version quickly and vice versa. It's not a barrier anymore.

 

Is that a cochlear implant, or something different? How does he describe the sound he gears now? Has it changed? I've been considering it, but it's expensive surgery from what I understand, and I've done pretty well for almost my entire life with one deaf ear.

For the OP, I lost my hearing in my right ear at age 3, I've been driving for 25 years without any issues when it came to the DOT physical.

 

That is called a BAHA implant. It’s different from cochlear.

 

I worked with the deaf community at the start of my IT career supporting video phones.

ASL is hard for a hearing person to understand sometimes. They don’t have signs for certain things like professions. You wouldn’t sign musician, you would sign music-person. They also don’t use the endings of word, tenses. Which is why deaf written English is usually pretty bad. They have a hard time with past present and future also. They usually don’t say “hang up the phone” which is a present command, they usually say “hung up the phone” or just “hung up”.

One interesting side note is working with them you learn quickly how reliant we are on hearing. Very often deaf people leave the water running in the bathroom sink, because they can’t hear it. It’s hearing it on and running that queues our brain that the water is still running, it needs to be shut off.

 

I think that's what it's called. He said his hearing is as good as it was before he went deaf in that ear.

 

What English language does not accommodate is terms of space, time, present, past and future. Plus established particulars to a situation or story using a portion of air space in front of you for the good guy and bad guy etc. One over here one over there and then you can proceed to work your way down the story without excessive repeating.

It is true that written English is not that good when written by a deaf person. At times even myself is corrected now and then for perceived grammar or syntax liberties.

A example using a english language situation versus what would be expressed in ASL.

"Good bye Mother, I am going to the store; will return very soon." That's English.

in ASL, it's going to be butchered into something like this.

Bye, mom. At store soon back.

And even with those few words it's possible to lose a few of them and use face expressions instead to convey additional thought. And you wonder sometime what is going on with the deaf being so expressive with the faces, usually way beyond what is expressed by non deaf English speakers who seem dull and statues by comparison. The body language is part of the language expressed as well as emotions etc.

It is truly a living language. Capable of adjusting and changing where necessary depending on the situation. There was a 6 year old girl who was deaf going to the Oscars apparently for starring in a movie called the silent one. Her sign language is particularly regional focused on California exclusively. I have had to visit a translation site to come up with the necessary learning before i could read her signs well enough.

There was a storm not too far back last year in which the Governor of one state lassoed a non certified sign language interperter on short notice to do the translation of the briefings provided by The Weather Channel. And when I viewed this particular person signing, it was gibberish and nonsense. Babbling of a baby. As it turned out this one was not using any language for the deaf. But literally a made up interpertation of what he thought should be a sign set for whatever it is in his own mind. But to essentially all other deaf, it meant nothing to them. And created a storm blowback against him because there was nothing there but essentially babbling of a baby with no structure, meaning or words at all. He confessed that yes he never learned anything with languages for the deaf, he just made it up as he went along rather than admit to the Governor that he knew nothing and should be the very last person to stand up there. I guess pride goes before the fall. Needless to say, we wont see this one again.

The one thing I do miss with being around deaf (There is a deaf church down in NLR at the assembly) is that there is a very large amount of information that can be compressed and shared among many people without difficulty. It is faster and easier to go through 50 people socially with sign than it is to do the same with spoken English.

Finally but not least, I share that some of my family carried a regret that they never really took sign language seriously. And a few of them later in life went deaf due to infection and so on and now have need of it. It is very hard for them to learn it now. It's unfortunate.

They always want to learn the dirty words first before anything. Like truly outrageously filthy. he he.