Headphones Behind the Wheel? You’re Joking, Right?

Sadly not. One in five drivers under 30 listen to portable music players through headphones while driving, and they face serious injury

Headphones behind the wheel:

In a recent study, the NRMA has discovered that one in five drivers under the age of 30 risks a serious accident by driving with headphones on. We’re not talking about hands-free kits here, but actual MP3/portable music player headphones. The Sydney Morning Herald reported the story and was polite and to the point, but we’re just going to come straight out with it and say to people currently partaking in this activity (and we know some of reading this do it, it’s just maths), “what the hell are you thinking?”.

The problem is that this activity isn’t actually illegal. You can, however, be charged if your use of headphones in a car was deemed to be the cause of the accident.

John Hallal of the NRMA told the Sydney Morning that the practice can be as distracting as using your mobile phone in the car without a hands-free kit. "It does beg the question why one is illegal and the other is not," he said.

The simple fact of the matter is that the use of headphones in your car to listen to music can completely block out external noises. Suddenly, you don’t notice that emergency vehicle speeding up behind you, or the car running alongside you, or the motorbike in your blind spot because you can’t hear them. Be smart about it, don’t pay for the accident when one occurs, pay for a better in car audio system that eliminates your need for headphone use in the car.

Even with a proper audio system in your car, common sense should be used. The volume should remain at a level that allows you to hear external noises and you should always keep your eyes on the road rather than playing around with MP3 playlists or the controls while you’re moving.

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I'll never understand people wanting to use their headphones either. You lose complete track of everything around you and it's an accident waiting to happen.

I read somewhere that a ridiculous number of people in Australia are hit whilst crossing roads because they're either on the phone or have headphones in, and inevitably get hit because they're not paying attention to oncoming traffic.

It's no surprise that this is happening, but it's actually surprising that a law hasn't been made against headphones in cars

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Yeah, I'm surprised that it wasn't illegal as well! Seriously, you think that your car sound system, even a cheap one, would give you far superior sound quality to those headphones. What would be worse is if people used noise-cancelling headphones while driving. Now that would be stupid and asking to have an accident.

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