Keep your eyes on the road. While this may be sound advice, what about your other senses? As an example, think about how much work your ears are doing while driving. You’re using your ears to engage with other people in your vehicle, call your attention to important info coming up on your dashboard, and help you monitor other vehicles.
So how you drive can change if you’re going through hearing impairment. That doesn’t automatically mean you will have to quit driving because you’ve become excessively dangerous. When it comes to safety, inexperience and distracted driving are much bigger liabilities. Nevertheless, some specific precautions need to be taken by people with hearing loss to ensure they keep driving as safely as possible.
Developing good driving habits can go a long way to help you remain a safe driver even if hearing impairment might be affecting your situational awareness.
How hearing loss could be affecting your driving
Vision is the primary sense utilized when driving. Even if you have total hearing loss, your driving could change but you will still probably be able to drive. While driving you do use your hearing a great deal, after all. Some prevalent examples include:
- Emergency vehicles can usually be heard before they can be seen.
- Even though many vehicles are designed to decrease road noise, your sense of hearing can raise your awareness of other vehicles. For example, you will normally be able to hear a large truck coming toward you.
- Audible alerts will sound when your vehicle is attempting to alert you to something, such as an unbuckled seat belt or an open door.
- Your hearing will usually alert you when your car is damaged in some way. If your engine is rapping or you have an exhaust leak, for instance.
- Other motorists will commonly honk their horns to make you aware of their presence. If you fail to notice 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 build your total situational awareness. You could start to miss more and more of these audio cues as your hearing loss advances. 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 keep driving even after developing hearing loss! Here are a few ways you can be certain to remain safe when out on the road:
- Keep the noise inside your car to a minimum: Hearing loss will make it hard for your ears to separate noises. It could be easy for your ears to get overwhelmed and for you to get distracted if you have passengers loudly talking and music playing and wind in your ears. So roll up your window, turn down the music, and keep the talking to a minimum when driving.
- Check your mirrors more often: Even with sirens blaring, you may not hear that ambulance coming up behind you. So make sure you aren’t neglecting your mirrors. And generally try to keep an elevated awareness for emergency vehicles.
- Put your phone away: Well, this is wise advice whether you suffer from hearing loss or not. Today, one of the leading reasons for distraction is a cellphone. And that doubles when you try to use them with hearing loss. You will simply be safer when you put your phone away and it could save your life.
- Don’t neglect your dash lights: Usually, your car will beep or ding when you need to look at your instrument panel for something. So regularly glance down to see if any dash lights are on.
How to keep your hearing aid driving ready
Driving is one of those activities 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:
- Get the most recent updates and keep your hearing aid clean and charged: You don’t want your hearing aid batteries to quit right when you’re driving to the store. That can be distracting and perhaps even dangerous. So be sure everything is in good working order and the batteries are charged.
- Wear your hearing aid each time you drive: It won’t help you if you don’t use it! So make certain you’re using your hearing aids every time you get behind the wheel. This will also help your brain get used to the signals your hearing aid sends into your ears.
- Have us program a driving setting for you: We can program a car setting into your hearing aid if you drive a lot. This setting will be adjusted for the interior space and configuration of your vehicle (where, normally, your passenger is beside and not in front of you), making your drive easier and more pleasant.
Plenty of individuals with hearing loss continue to drive and hearing aids make the process safer and easier. Your drive will be pleasant and your eyes will remain focused on the road if you establish safe driving habits.
