Don’t take your eyes off the road. While this might be sound advice, how about your other senses? For example, think about how much work your ears are doing while driving. You’re using your ears to connect with other individuals in your vehicle, alert you to important information appearing on your dashboard, and help you keep track of other vehicles.
So when you’re coping with hearing impairment, how you drive can change. That’s not to say your driving will come to be prohibitively dangerous. Distracted driving and inexperience are greater liabilities when it comes to safety. That being said, those with diminished hearing should take some special safeguards to stay as safe as possible.
Establishing good driving habits can go a long way to help you remain a safe driver even if hearing loss might be influencing your situational awareness.
How your driving may be effected by hearing loss
Generally, driving is a vision-centric task (at least, if it’s not a vision-centric activity, something’s wrong). Even full-blown hearing loss probably won’t keep you from driving, but it very likely could change how you drive. After all, you use your hearing a great deal while you’re driving. Here are some typical examples:
- Your sense of hearing can help you have a better sense of other vehicles around you. For example, you will usually be able to hear a large truck coming your way.
- Your hearing will usually alert you when your car is damaged in some way. For instance, if you run over an obstruction in the road or a rock hits your windshield.
- Your vehicle will {often\sometimes} make audible noises and alerts in order to alert you to something (turn signals or unbuckled seat belts, for example).
- You can often hear emergency vehicles before you see them.
- 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 example, or you start to wander into the other lane, a horn can alert you before it becomes a problem.
All of these audio cues can help develop your overall situational awareness. As your hearing loss advances, you may miss more and more of these cues. But there are steps you can take to ensure you still remain as safe as possible while driving.
New safe driving habits to develop
If you’re dealing with hearing loss and you want to keep driving, that’s okay! Stay safe out on the road using these tips:
- Keep interior noise to a minimum: Hearing loss will make it hard for your ears to differentiate noises. When the wind is howling and your passenger is talking, it may become easy for your ears to grow overstimulated, which can cause you to become distracted and tired. So when you’re driving, it’s a good idea to lower the volume on your radio, keep conversation to a minimum, and put up your windows.
- 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 generally try to keep an elevated awareness for emergency vehicles.
- Put away your phone: Even if your hearing is good, this one is still smart advice. One of the leading reasons for distracted driving, nowadays, is cellphones. And that doubles when you try to use them with hearing loss. Keeping your phone stashed can, simply, keep you and other people safer–and save your life.
- Keep an eye on your instrument panel: Normally, your car will ding or beep 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 make sure your turn signals aren’t still blinking, or you don’t have a check engine light on.
Keeping your hearing aid ready for the road
Driving is one of those tasks that, if you are dealing with hearing loss, a hearing aid can really be helpful. And when you’re driving, utilize these tips to make your hearing aids a real asset:
- Have us program a driving setting for you: If you intend to do a lot of driving, you can ask us to program a “car” setting on your hearing aid. The size of the inside of your vehicle and the fact that your passengers will be speaking to you from the side or rear will be the factors we will use to fine tune this “car setting” for easier safer driving.
- Keep your hearing aids clean, charged, and updated: You don’t want your hearing aid batteries to die right in the middle of a drive to the store. That can distract you and might even bring about a dangerous situation. So keep your batteries charged and ensure everything’s working properly.
- Use your hearing aid each time you drive: It won’t help you if you don’t use it! So make sure you’re using your hearing aids each time you get behind the wheel. This will also help your brain acclimate to the signals your hearing aid sends your way.
Lots of people with hearing loss keep driving and hearing aids make the process easier and safer. Establishing good driving habits can help guarantee that your drive is pleasant and that your eyes remain safely on the road.
