With all the deaths from left turning lorries in London...

[superbadger]

Five seconds after a lorry left indicates, a shower system is activated on the left side, spraying (non toxic) flourescent yellow paint out. Not only does it deter undertakers, but it makes determined ones more visible if they survive!

(obviously)

Please tell me your up for promotion? That would be fab!!!. And good for the local economy too (the paint company down the road!)

 

[Twanger]

No problem with that, as long as I don't end up getting flack for it from people again.



Some fair points.

Regarding hearing speech - I guess as most music is focused around the human voice i.e. singing, rapping etc then of all available sources of sound out there this is the most likely to be interfered with. I'd suggest it would be the same as if two people were talking to you at the same time - I'd argue that you would still notice the other person talking - one wouldn't make you completely unaware of the other - but you'd struggle to make out the specifics of what both of them are saying.

Unless you were listening to particularly heavy metal, dubstep or some kind of avant garde noise music, I'd argue that this won't interfere with the sound of general traffic noise, but that even then you would still be aware of both, much as you would be aware of them amongst the general fug of noise that surrounds us in busy urban environments anyway.

I guess I am coming from a different perspective however, I am a sound engineer of sorts by trade, and it is an essential part of my job to be able to listen out for stuff other people might not notice, and maybe that's giving me somewhat of an advantage over others, but the main crux of my argument is that additional noise doesn't stop you hearing others - the main thing is just paying attention, and I guess some people might find that hard when listening to music, but I suspect the issue with 'iPod zombies' is more from their wilful inattentiveness than from the act of listening to music itself. Take the iPod off people like that and I'm sure they'd still ride like bellends.

You can get into some really interesting perception issues here. When you listen to what people are saying, you are understanding through interpreting a wide range of contextual cues - if you actually look at the acoustic content of speech it's pretty minimal - you don't construct meaning from perceiving and reconstructing 25 phonemes a second, so my problem is probably psychological, to do with processing in the brain, rather than physical, to do with the ears. So yes, you are probably right, it's an attention issue. When I'm cycling, I pick up an impression of what's happening around me through my ears, and it's an important part of what I feel is keeping me safe on the road. I'm always listening. I even turn my head, when cycling fast, to cut down wind noise. But I do know that even if I was listening to something really laid back, like seagulls or whalesong, I would still be rendered uncertain about my interpretation of the traffic sounds I was hearing.

It may well be the case that people who plug in ipods only do so because they don't give a damn about what they hear from the road, so it doesn't make any difference for them. But I still think they'd be safer if they did.

 

[Twanger]

Nah, I'm not annoyed, there are plenty of silly cyclists for us to shout at. I'm really interested in your story about driving though, thanks a lot for sharing that!!! Coming from a heavy car culture country, it's an eye opener for me here in the UK with so many people not having cycled or driven until later in life.

I've been cycling since I was a kid. I just never got around to learning to drive until my wife bought a car. Are you from America, then?