Don’t take your eyes off the road. While this might be sound advice, how about your other senses? For example, think about the amount of work your ears are doing while driving. You’re using your ears to connect with other individuals in your vehicle, alert you to important info appearing on your dashboard, and help you track other vehicles.
So how you drive can change if you’re experiencing hearing loss. That’s not to say your driving will become prohibitively dangerous. With regards to safety, inexperience and distracted driving are far greater liabilities. That said, those with decreased hearing should take some specific safeguards to remain as safe as possible.
Hearing loss can impact your situational awareness but developing good driving habits can help you stay safe while driving.
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 has gone wrong). Even if you have complete hearing loss, your driving may change but you will still probably be able to drive. While driving you do use your hearing a great deal, after all. Some typical examples include:
- If there is any damage to your vehicle, your sense of hearing can alert you to it. If your engine is knocking or you have an exhaust leak, for example.
- If another driver needs to make you aware of their presence, they will often use their horn. If you fail to notice the light turn to green, for instance, or you start to drift into the other lane, a horn can get your attention before it becomes a problem.
- Even though many vehicles are designed to decrease road noise, your sense of hearing can raise your awareness of other vehicles. You will usually be able to hear an oncoming truck, for instance.
- Emergency vehicles can usually be heard before they can be seen.
- Audible alerts will sound when your vehicle is attempting to alert you to something, like an unbuckled seat belt or an open door.
By using all of these audio cues, you will be developing better situational awareness. As your hearing loss advances, you may miss more and more of these cues. But you can take some positive measures to keep your driving as safe as possible.
Practicing new safe driving habits
If you’re experiencing hearing loss and you want to keep driving, that’s okay! Stay safe out on the road using these tips:
- Check your mirrors more often: You may not be able to hear an ambulance pull up behind you–even with all those sirens going. So make sure you aren’t neglecting your mirrors. And keep the possible presence of emergency vehicles in mind.
- Put away your phone: Even if your hearing is strong, this one is still smart advice. Phones are among the leading causes of distraction on the road today. And that goes double when you attempt to use them with hearing loss. Keeping your phone stashed can, simply, keep you and other people safer–and save your life.
- Don’t ignore your dash lights: Normally, your car will beep or ding when you need to look at your instrument panel for some reason. So you’ll want to make sure you glance down (when it’s safe) and confirm your turn signals aren’t still blinking, or your check engine light isn’t on.
- Keep interior noise to a minimum: It will be hard for your ears to isolate noises when you have hearing loss. It could be easy for your ears to become overstimulated and for you to get distracted if you have passengers loudly speaking and music playing and wind blowing in your ears. So when you’re driving, it’s a good idea to reduce the volume on your radio, keep conversation to a minimum, and put up your windows.
How to keep your hearing aid ready for driving
If you suffer from hearing loss, driving is one of those situations where having a hearing aid can really come in handy. And when you’re driving, use these tips to make your hearing aids a real asset:
- Wear your hearing aid every time you drive: It won’t help you if you don’t wear it! So be sure you’re wearing your hearing aids each time you drive. This will also help your brain acclimate to the signals your hearing aid sends your way.
- Get the most recent updates and keep your hearing aid clean and charged: When you’re half way to the store, the last thing you want is for your battery to quit. That can be distracting and maybe even dangerous. So keep your batteries charged and make sure everything’s working properly.
- Ask us for a “driving” setting: 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 optimize this “car setting” for easier safer driving.
Hearing loss doesn’t mean driving is an issue, particularly with hearing aids which make it easier and safer. Your drive will be pleasant and your eyes will stay focused on the road if you establish safe driving habits.
