Someone asked if anybody has driven with earplugs. Yes, I do. I travel on the highway about twice a month for about a four hour trip one way. I use the little spongy things from the grocery store where it reduces the decibels by about 30. It does make a big difference for the long haul. My last trip I did the usual 4 hour trip in 3 hours and 15 minutes going non stop. And, I was not tired. I was pretty revved up. The seats are great!! and having the help of the earplugs does make a difference. I have to crank up the music just a wee bit to hear that. And, I don't tell anybody I use earplugs, but yeah buy some for that cross country trip. just a few bucks. Good luck and have fun!! Once you are in your seat, you won't want to get out.

 

On long, top-down highway trips, ear plugs are great. Other drivers kinda look at you funny, but I think they're just jealous.

 

I'll have to give that a try when I drive without my silencers this spring..

 

Is it legal?

 

Legality depends on the state, I believe. I'll personally take the ticket over the hearing loss.

I just drove round trip to Phoenix from Salem, OR with earplugs in. The ears start to get tired of the plugs after 10 hours or so. On the other hand, my ears were ringing from going without for the couple hours of the trip, too.

Andy H.

 

I wear earplugs on the motorbike for any journey over 30mins. The wind noise around the helmet is tiring to painful after a while. I don't think there's any legal issues with them. Proper earplugs only block out the low frequency noise anyway (which is the most powerful and ear damaging), you can still hear emergency vehicles perfectly well. The construction type earplugs are fine too (and real cheap down at Home Depot), just remember to throw them away after each use. I've got the more expensive washable ones as I find they contour to the inner ear better and don't produce any fatigure with prolonged use.

 

off topic, but can you drive with a helmet on?

 

I doubt you will experience any hearing loss from riding in a car, just temporary loss of sensitivity. This does not of course apply to people who have jacked up sound systems with frequency boosted tweeters - they can and will produce irreparable damage in long term exposure of over 95 decibels.

Almost all hearing loss is caused by the cilia's receptors being damaged by HIGH FRQUENCY tonality - in a car, most of the acoustic energy generated by the tires, engine, drivetrain is low frequency - very low, well below 100 Hz, and most is subsonic. Our hearing has a natural loss of sensitivity to fairly low amplitude low freq sound (if you are interested, reference the work of Fletcher and Munson).

Our hearing evolved from a variety of physical and environmental stimuli - our ears are about 6 inches apart, or one half-wavelength of a 1kHz tone, and this gives us a high ability to localize (determine the place) where a sound comes from. This is important when we used to have to stalk prey for food, and had to avoid becoming food from predators - a twig cracking is in the 1 - 2 kHz range. Not a coincidence that is where our hearing is most acute.

I have verified the distribution of driving noise by doing real time spectrum analysis with my portable FFT analyzer.

Now, you certainly will arive less tired because the low frequency energy does wear one out emotionally, but a lot of that is transferred through bone conductivity, and is not affected by the hearing silencers. But it will help.

By the way, I measured the amplitude response of the S2000's CD player/speakers, and it looked pretty good - the midrange was quite flat, with a bit of mid-bass boom, which offsets the ambient noise at speed nicely.

 

Being an Audiologist I can provide some specific answers to your question.

Driving with ear plugs in is legal. There are no state specific regulations for this, and it is a typical recommend for people who regularly ride motor cycles.

The catch with the foam (E.A.R.) style earplugs is that 99.5% of users insert them improperly and the average attenuation is functionally ~15-20 dBA within a restricted frequency bandwidth. Make sure that you insert the earplugs properly. If it feels like you can almost taste the foam... then its in far enough.

My recommendation would be to pursue custom made musicians ear plugs. Look toward a Etymotic ER-15, you will get a significant amount of flat attenuation perfect for the situations you have described. Expect to spend ~$120.00 usd for these.

As for suffering a hearing loss from vehicle related noise exposure. OSHA federal regulations limit noise exposure to 95 decibels for 8 hours. This means that on average you will not be exposing yourself to harmful amounts of noise. However, if you are turning up your radio to compensate for wind noise then you maybe setting up an artificially loud situation which can put you at risk for a hearing loss. Add on modifications to these noise levels and it can become a concern.

It is true that exposure to noise can be fatiguing, ear plugs may help with this.

The amount of extra aural noise exposure that will be suffered due to bone conduction is minor, the residual noise perceived is very much transmitted through the hearing protection device.

The frequency distribution of sound only plays a minor role in the ease of acquiring a hearing loss. The auditory system filters incoming signals and provides gain to specific frequency ranges. This gain is most robust in the frequency range of 2-3khz, due to the physical characteristics of the traveling wave within the cochlea the primary point of basilar excitation is suffered close to 4khz which is why even in the case of broad band noise exposure the vast majority of noise induced hearing loss manifests close to 4khz.

Road Rage-

Good to see references to Fletcher and Munson's work, they are by far some of the founding fathers of psychoacoustics. Fletcher 1947 continues to be a seminal reference for perceptual frequency weighting and derivation of articulation indices.

 

I'm 6'3 and with the top down my forehead it is practically over the windshield, creating lots of wind noise.

I've used ear plugs for years riding motorcycles. Given my giraffe-like proportions i will continue to use em on long, higher speed drives......just makes sense.