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Agreed. Unrelated pro-tip: wearing them while riding a motorcycle. Reduces fatigue and transforms a rough experience into almost luxurious. Highly recommended.

• ginko 4mo ago
  Being able to hear your surroundings on a motorcycle or bicycle seems very important for safety to me. Filtering that out feels dangerous.
  • infecto 4mo ago
    Ear plugs are recommended while riding a motorcycle.
  • t-3 4mo ago
    On a pedal bike, it's very important because you are most likely to be hit by cars from behind. Motorcycles move much faster, and most riders wear helmets as well, already impacting hearing. The road noise and wind is very loud, try rolling down the window in a car on the freeway and imagine that on .your whole body.
    • smilespray 4mo ago
      Had a close call with a cyclist going the same direction as me. She veered over in my direction as I was overtaking and was rather startled to see me, as she was wearing Airpods.
      • ChoGGi 4mo ago
        Ah yes, the unintentionally suicidal, scariest part of being on the road.
    • hoppyhoppy2 4mo ago
      >you are most likely to be hit by cars from behind Do you have a source for this info? It contradicts what I've read about the subject.
      • t-3 4mo ago
        Just personal and anecdotal experience, and also that bike lanes usually move with traffic rather than against it.
    • lostlogin 4mo ago
      > On a pedal bike, it's very important because you are most likely to be hit by cars from behind. If anyone hasn’t tried a bike radar, they are a massive help. Eg Garmin Varia. Take care with the new model, the light is insane, on 5% you have the eye of Sauron blinding the rider behind you.
  • Cthulhu_ 4mo ago
    In the Netherlands they banned wearing earplugs/headphones on bicycles for this reason (as well as using your device). Whether that's enforced / enforceable is another matter though. On a motorcycle you need hearing protection due to wind noise, but good plugs will filter out the louder noises, not so much important ones.
  • Fluorescence 4mo ago
    As a cyclist, I find sound such a poor signal I'd consider it optional. Too many threats are silent and sound is too late, misleadingly bounces of other surfaces and generally poorly correlated with significance. Safe cycling is all about vision. If you can't see it's safe, it's not. It isn't simply seeing imminent threats but predicting them e.g. identifying drivers that aren't paying attention and where a car could suddenly emerge like blind turnings, car doors, pedestrians and such, and countering with appropriate caution / road position. If you find noise useful, IMHO it means you aren't sufficiently aware of your environment.
    • 9dev 4mo ago
      I cycle every day, and sound is definitely important; you need to plan ahead when you hear an ambulance approaching, for example. Plus, your brain processes things you see much better if there's a sound it can correlate the movement with.
  • carlosjobim 4mo ago
    There is practically nothing to hear that matters for your safety on a motorcycle at highway speeds. An ambulance you will hear even with headphones.
• wcrossbow 4mo ago
  Sorry but no! On my corner of the world it's not allowed but more importantly it's dangerous. When riding your bike you must have all your senses fully engaged. First day I got on my new ride my dad gave me a piece of biker wisdom: You are the weakest and smallest vehicle () on the road, watch out and drive like nobody can see you or cares about you. () Bicycles and other light vehicles excluded
  • _jw 4mo ago
    I ride with AirPods on, no content playing, just transparency mode. It cuts harsh wind noise, maintains 3D acoustics, and keeps me safer as a result. They’re a hearing aid for me in this case.
    • Cthulhu_ 4mo ago
      You may want to get some passive ear protection though, active noise canceling is not the same as noise protection. Unless you drive slowly, I find that driving at 60 kph max is still comfortable on the ears.
    • frumiousirc 4mo ago
      > cuts harsh wind noise They look a little silly but cat-ears work surprisingly well.
  • adammarples 4mo ago
    No, riding for a long time without ear protection will damage your ears. Ear plugs at least are recommended. I am not hearing anything over the wind and engine noise anyway.
• Neywiny 4mo ago
  When I got my (admittedly car) license they made it clear that's illegal. Hasn't stopped people from doing it but yeah don't. Maybe get a quieter exhaust
  • infecto 4mo ago
    Earplugs are pretty common on a motorcycle. The issue is not the exhaust, its the wind which gets to damaging levels at pretty low speeds.
    • quotz 4mo ago
      wouldnt the helmet prevent that ?
      • infecto 4mo ago
        Not at all. 30-40mph you can hit around 90 db inside the helmet. You’re not that much better with a helmet off either. Air moving over surfaces is loud, if not the helmet you are going to get it from the wind hitting your ears. There are certainly helmets that try to optimize for noise but there is no single one fix beyond ear plugs.
      • curiousObject 4mo ago
        The helmet protects the ears from direct airflow noise, but it also extends out into the high-speed airflow much more than ears do. The overall picture is that a helmet’s thick material blocks high frequencies. But it exacerbates and amplifies low frequency sound and white noise. As well, a helmet confuses the ear’s capabilities for identifying direction of sound that’s incoming If a helmet is helpful is a question of how fast the motorcycle is moving and what kinds of sounds the rider needs to hear. It’s complicated, but wearing no helmet might be safer at low speeds because the driver is more aware. No helmet, is undoubtedly not safer at high speed because brains are fragile Edit: a simple experiment for anyone is to put on a full size motorcycle helmet anywhere, and then you can understand how much your hearing is dampened by it. But I guess it’s probably no worse than the experience of someone driving a car, which is soundproof by design
• GJim 4mo ago
  Stupidly dangerous and (in my country) illegal. Please retract your comment and don't encourage such stupidity. EDIT: Since this is being misinterpreted... Earplugs that deaden sound are fine and encouraged on a motorbike, playing music in your ears is what masks other sound and is both stupid and illegal.
  • infecto 4mo ago
    Really depends on how they are being worn. If they are on without any sound being played its fine. Ear plugs are highly encouraged while riding a motorcycle and after a decade plus of riding I have never thought ear plugs along with a headset prevented me from hearing whats going on around me. Maybe it is your own misinterpretation as the parent never said they were playing music on them. You might not realize just how loud the wind noise is on a bike, you are not exactly hearing your surroundings music or not. Most if not all of your awareness on a motorcycle is coming from your eyes not ears, so hard to really say its stupid.
    • esperent 4mo ago
      There's just a tiny step from wearing noise canceling earphones with no music playing, to pressing a button and blaring Bat out of Hell while you speed down the mountainside. In any case, it's irrelevant - as far as I know, wearing headphones or earphones while driving a motorcycle is illegal whether or not you happen to be playing music in them, because how would anyone else know? If you get in an accident and get charged with distracted driving, that's on you. If you want earplugs, just wear them. They're much cheaper and more effective than sound cancelling headphones if you genuinely just want to block noise.
      • infecto 4mo ago
        Not sure what your trying to a argue but it simply depends on the local laws but from a safety perspective I cannot think of many opportunities the sound would save you as it’s already loud enough from wind noise alone. I ride with a comm system that I play media over and trying to be reflective of my past and I don’t see it. Not really advocating one way or the other like yourself, I don’t have that strong of a feeling about that law but from purely a safety aspect I don’t fully agree with the opinion. If you don’t want to wear ear protection just don’t wear it. It’s your ears.
• asdfsa32 4mo ago
  Do you ride for economic reasons?
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• wazoox 4mo ago
  In Europe it's strictly forbidden to wear headphones under the helmet. In case of a fall the in-ear device could cause grave injuries. Wearing a recent helmet and protective gloves with hardened knuckles is of course mandatory. But many helmets are equipped with bluetooth speakers and mike, of course.
  • balfirevic 4mo ago
    > In Europe it's strictly forbidden to wear headphones under the helmet. No it's not. > protective gloves with hardened knuckles is of course mandatory No it's not.
• throw0101c 4mo ago
  > Agreed. Unrelated pro-tip: wearing them while riding a motorcycle. Reduces fatigue and transforms a rough experience into almost luxurious. Highly recommended. What kind of NRR rating, active or passive, do they have? I wear disposable foam plugs when riding, and haven't ever considered using the AirPods I have. I find the sound of the machine part of the experience of riding and wouldn't really want to get rid of it; I treat the moto sound as a kind of white noise that's different that everything else in my life (though this is with a short-ish commute, and not long-distance drudgery). If I wanted music or comms I would probably lean more towards ear plugs plus a Cardo/Sena unit. Or perhaps something with an official ANSI/CSA NRR rating, like Isotunes.
  • carlosjobim 4mo ago
    Use a model of in-ear phones which let you still hear the low frequency rumbling of the motor. That's the pleasant part of the noise anyway.
  • wlonkly 4mo ago
    The reason they don't (and won't) have an NRR rating is that they're only useful for constant noise, and not for impulse sounds. There's no question that Airpods are not industrial PPE, for instance. But I also ride with foamies most of the time (laser lites) and airpods occasionally, and I'd guess that the bike and wind are maybe 10-15% louder with airpods. The foamies win out for actually staying in my ears when I put my helmet on, but if I can get it on then the airpods stay in place fine. Surprisingly, when I was looking for a rough equivalent to NRR for Airpods, I discovered that Apple does advertise their ANC as hearing protection[1], which I'll assume the FDA has now permitted, because Apple didn't used to make that claim because the FDA wouldn't permit it. They don't offer an NRR and they do warn against impulse sounds, but that KB article suggests a 20dB drop, which is nothing compared to foamies but is in the same range as musicians' earplugs or hardhat earmuffs, and probably better than Loops. [1] https://support.apple.com/en-ca/120850 https://support.apple.com/en-ca/120850
• poncho_romero 4mo ago
  So you're making noise for everyone else, while enjoying silence yourself?
  • agentdax5 4mo ago
    There’s this thing called wind that makes noise and also other vehicles on the road as well. Did you ever consider that?
    • poncho_romero 4mo ago
      You're right, my comment is unfair. In my defense, I've had my sleep interrupted several times recently by motorcyclists trying to make as much noise as possible, so I'm a little ornery ;)
• multjoy 4mo ago
  You should be wearing ear protection in any case. The fact that the AirPods have a published SNL is a bonus.