Don’t take your eyes off the road. While this might be sound advice, what about your other senses? Your ears, for instance, are doing tons of work when you’re driving, helping you monitor other vehicles, calling your attention to info on your dashboard, and keeping you engaged with the other individuals in your vehicle.
So how you drive can change if you’re going through hearing loss. That doesn’t inevitably mean you will need to stop driving because you’ve become excessively dangerous. Distracted driving and inexperience are larger liabilities in terms of safety. Nevertheless, some special safeguards should be taken by people with hearing loss to ensure they continue 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 hearing loss could be impacting your driving
Vision is the principal sense utilized when driving. Even complete hearing loss most likely won’t keep you from driving, but it very likely may change the way you drive. While driving you do utilize your hearing a lot, after all. Here are some typical examples:
- Emergency vehicles can often be heard before they can be seen.
- If there is any damage to your vehicle, your sense of hearing can alert you to it. For instance, if you run over an obstruction in the road or a rock hits your windshield.
- Your sense of hearing can help you have better awareness of other vehicles near you. For instance, you will usually be able to hear a large truck coming your way.
- Your vehicle will often make audible noises and alerts in order to make you aware of something (turn signals or unbuckled seat belts, for instance).
- Other drivers will commonly use their horns to alert you to their presence. For example, if you begin to drift into another lane or you don’t go at a green light, a horn can clue you in to your mistake before bad things happen.
All of these audio cues can help develop your overall situational awareness. As your hearing loss gets worse, you might be missing more and more of these cues. But there are steps you can take to ensure you stay as safe as you can while driving.
New safe driving habits to develop
It’s fine if you want to continue driving even after you have hearing loss! Stay safe out on the road using these tips:
- Keep your phone stowed: Well, this is wise advice whether you suffer from hearing loss or not. Phones are among the highest causes of distraction on the road today. And that goes double when you attempt to use them when you have hearing loss. Keeping your phone stashed can, simply, keep you safer–and save your life.
- Don’t disregard your dash lights: Normally, when you need to give attention to your instrument panel, your vehicle will beep or make some other sound. So regularly look down to see if any dash lights are on.
- Pay extra attention to your mirrors: Even with sirens blaring, you may not hear that ambulance coming up behind you. So be vigilant about checking your mirrors. And keep the possible presence of emergency vehicles in mind.
- Minimize in-car noises: Hearing loss is going to make it hard for your ears to separate sounds. It will be easy for your ears to become overstimulated and for you to get distracted if you have passengers loudly talking and music playing and wind blowing in your ears. So when you’re driving, it’s a smart idea to decrease the volume on your radio, keep conversation to a minimum, and put up your windows.
Keeping your hearing aid ready for the road
If you are dealing with hearing loss, driving is one of those scenarios where wearing a hearing aid can really come in handy. And when you’re driving, utilize these tips to make your hearing aids a real asset:
- 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 could even bring about a dangerous situation. So make sure everything is working properly and the batteries are charged.
- Use your hearing aid every time you drive: If you don’t use it, it won’t help! 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.
- Ask us for a “driving” setting: We can program a car setting into your hearing aid if you drive a lot. The size of the interior of your vehicle and the fact that your passengers will be talking to you from the side or rear will be the variables we will use to optimize this “car setting” for smoother safer driving.
Plenty of people with hearing loss continue to drive and hearing aids make the process easier and safer. Your drive will be pleasant and your eyes will remain focused on the road if you develop safe driving habits.
