Archive for hard of hearing drivers

The Expensive Interview

{ October 4, 2007 @ 3:57 am } · { deaf, deafness, driving while deaf, hard of hearing, hard of hearing drivers, hearing impaired, hearing loss, lipreading }
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Do you have close relatives that cannot remember to get your attention before speaking to you, or make sure you can see their lips, or speak clearly, with sufficient volume? Every time I get together with my mother (who lives three miles from me), I ALWAYS have to say one (or more) of the following phrases numerous times:

  • I can’t hear you!
  • What was that?
  • Did you know I have a hearing loss, Mom?
  • Are you talking to me?

Why can’t she remember to communicate properly with me? It doesn’t matter where we are; her place, my place, or in public. It drives me nuts! But one time it almost drove me into the poorhouse.

After I finished graduate school, I applied for a Librarian position several hours away in Jacksonville, Florida. I didn’t trust my old clunker to make the trip and asked my mother if I could borrow her nice car. She agreed to let me use it, and took a vacation day to go with me.

Driving to the interview was uneventful, and the interview lasted a few hours. Anxious to get home, I took a shortcut hoping to shave some time off this long trip. I did this by driving through a little town called Waldo (population 821). My mother chose this time to mumble something to me, and because the road was empty, I turned my head to lipread her.

For those of you who don’t know, Waldo is one of two places in the United States identified by AAA as a “speed trap.” The speed limit changes from 65 down to 45 in the space of half a mile! The good people of Waldo have only 8 police officers who manage to write an astounding 500+ tickets each month. The revenue from these tickets covers 25% of the town’s budget.

I don’t need to tell you that lipreading and driving through a speed trap is NOT A GOOD IDEA. The resulting $200 speeding ticket was tough to pay, as I was fresh out of school and jobless. Outrageous car insurance premiums hounded me for three years following this ticket.

And I didn’t get that job.

The Whiplash Effect

{ August 24, 2007 @ 1:10 am } · { deafness, hard of hearing drivers, hearing aids, hearing impaired, hearing loss }
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I’ve known about my hearing loss for 31 years (diagnosed at age 11), and have gone through several stages dealing with my deafness:

  • feeling ashamed to tell people I couldn’t hear
  • trying to hide my hearing loss
  • denying my hearing loss
  • hiding my hearing aids
  • complete acceptance of both my hearing loss and hearing aids

When normal hearing people try to push me or any other hard of hearing (hoh) person back into any of the first four stages, my protective instinct gently emerges. Many years ago, this protective instinct was out of control. I believed I could whiplash normal hearing people into sync with my new-found acceptance of hearing loss.

Sad to say, I no longer remember the name of the first poor unfortunate soul to experience the whiplash effect. We’ll call her “Sarah.” Sarah made a huge mistake minutes after meeting me. She took me aside and said in a cheery voice, “I just thought you’d like to know that I can see your hearing aids!”

To say I reacted poorly is an understatement. Pressure cookers have nothing on me when I‘m angry. I said, “So? What do you want me to do, cover them up? Do you want me to be ashamed that I can’t hear well? Why should I hide my hearing aids? I can’t help the fact that I’m hard of hearing! Why don’t you hide your glasses - I can see them!”

Poor Sarah. She high-tailed it out of there and left me stewing. 

Have you ever done something like this?

Got Your Ears In?

{ August 8, 2007 @ 8:05 pm } · { audism, hard of hearing, hard of hearing drivers, hearing aids, hearing loss }
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It feels good to not wear my hearing aids every waking moment.  I shop for groceries, drive, and clean house sans my aids.  Why should I waste batteries amplifying silence?  Besides that, my ears (and brain) need a rest from the constant assault of sound. It’s exhausting hearing unnecessarily. I welcome the peace and quiet. Occasionally, I run into friends while “going commando” hoh-style. Inevitably, upon discovering my “nakedness,” the conversation goes a lot like this: 

“How can you drive without your hearing aids?  Isn’t that dangerous?” 

“How is that dangerous?” 

“You know what I mean – you can’t hear sirens!” 

“Let me ask you a question.  Do you listen to music when you drive?” 

“Yes.”  

“Do you ever crank up the volume?” 

“Of course!” 

“Then you can’t hear sirens, either.” 

“Oh.” 

Can you say audism?  In general, deaf and hard of hearing people have better driving records than normal hearing people.  Read on:

“Deaf people make better drivers than people with normal hearing — and they could be the world’s safest motorists, a fascinating new study shows. “That’s because they compensate for their disability by concentrating on watching the road,” the research showed. “‘They’ve got it all over us hearing people when it comes to driving,” said a spokesman for the National Association of Driver Educators for the Disabled. “‘They’ve always taken in everything with their eyes and as a result they tend to see everything when they’re at the wheel.”

“And not being able to hear ambulance and other emergency sirens doesn’t make deaf drivers unsafe at all. The study found that deaf drivers check their rear view mirrors frequently and can tell immediately if they should pull to the side of the road.” -

- Weekly World News, Lantaria, FL, April 25, 1995.