Beware the Silent Killer

Everyone knows that riding a motorcycle is inherently dangerous. But not everyone knows of all the dangers that riding possesses. Of course there is a mere fact that you are at mercy of other cars. And obviously the nature can take its shot at you as I had learned recently when Motodisiac and I almost lost our bikes and his girlfriend was almost “gone with the wind“. But besides the visible things there is one more. A silent killer. Its name is “wind noise”.

When I just started riding Motodisiac told me that wearing ear plugs really makes the world of difference. I laughed. I thought ear plugs will cut off everything. And hearing is one of the most important of all senses. Especially on the road. Then sometime later Motodisiac emailed me this article. It goes into specific explanation of how wind noise will affect your hearing. After reading it I got a little worried. So apparently the wind noise can make you go deaf if you are constantly exposed to it. And I ride 4 times a week on average. So I think I am exposed enough to be concerned about the issue.

The next day I tried riding with the ear plugs. They felt really weird at first. But I quickly got used to the feeling. And they did cut out almost all the wind noise. I had worried that the world would go mute once I plug them in. No, not the case. I could still hear other sounds coming from cars and other motorcycles on the road. A beneficial side effect - because of the ear plugs your ears will always stay clean :).

And the best feeling of it all was that now I am also addressing the issue of a potential hear loss.

A word from Motodisiac:

In the beginning of my riding career, always wondered why some riders wear earplugs. Aren’t you supposed to hear the wind noise and enjoy your bike’s exhaust note? I actually thought of those riders as of pussies.

My first long distance ride, 45 mile blast on the freeway to my friend’s place in Orange County, brought some noises in my head that would’t go away 45 minutes after the ride. At the time I was riding Ducati 888 with Termignoni exhaust.

Few years went by, and I still wasn’t concerned about protecting my hearing, I was really enjoying riding. However when I started commuting 100 miles a day, I started feeling the effects of it. At night I couldn’t fall asleep because of ringing in my ears. I started to think what could’ve caused it and riding was the first thing that came to mind.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 8:00 am and is filed under Motorcycles, Riding, Learning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.