[Wes]

It is supposed to be illegal in Tennessee to have your music “too loud”. Although there are people who drive around “bumping” all the time. My brother actually got a ticket for that in his Scion. It had the stock sound system which I think is like 4 little speakers so that seemed kind of stupid to me. He was supposed to go to court for the ticket and when he got there they had “lost the paperwork”. Okay, you cant have both ear buds in your ears, can you have a helmet with speakers in it?

[Clay Dowling]

I have four huge chrome plated subwoofers. Although with Honda’s love of high-revving engines it’s more of a scream than a “woof.”

[SantaCruzRider]

Some state laws say no ear buds or ear plugs in both ears, and/or no headphones covering both ears.

Helmet speakers are basically headphones mounted in the helmet. It could come down to how the LEO interprets that (but I’m no attorney — so don’t take this a legal advice).

But a large number of riders, self included, wear ear plugs to cut the wind noises. It’s widely argued that the engine and wind noise of many bikes and helmets are sufficient to cause longterm hearing damage, and in the short term, is very fatiguing.

So many of us may already be illegal because we choose to protect our hearing. Personally, if I’m going to wear ear plugs, I might as well have some pumping out tunes. So I wear noise-cancelling buds plugged to an iPod. I keep the sound low enough to hear sirens and such, but just loud enough to hear the song.

[Wes]

That all makes sense to me :p I’m going out to buy a new mp3 player Friday.

[zeppelinfromled]

If you’re going to ride with headphones, just be safe about it. Personally my bigger concern is not hearing something that I need to, not getting a ticket. If you run the cord inside your jacket and into the helmet, there’s no way your average cop is going to notice it. Just make sure it’s not too loud, and more importantly, that you’re not fiddling with your iPod while you should be paying attention to the road.

[gsmurfette]

The guys windows were down! That’s pathetic that he couldn’t hear me, but I had to listen to his gay rap. Not to mention that he almost ran over my foot (if I hadn’t stopped). What are you talking about shoes? I was yelling at the retard. He was turning and failed to yield to a ped. in the crosswalk with a walk sign. It has nothing to do with how loud my shoes are. The fact that if he had his music a bit lower, then you could of avoided pissing me off (and I almost kicked his dumb car, because it was one of those pimp-mobiles w/ spinners and crap) and all that jazz. I was just reiterating the fact that people listen to the music so loud in their cars that they have no clue what’s going on around them. He wouldn’t have heard a siren, horn, anything. Not to mention he probably couldn’t pass a hearing test due to the loss of long term abuse to his ears. Why don’t they have hearing tests at the DMV? I’d probably add that to my national DMV reform (if I was president, that’ll never happen b/c I hate politics).

[SantaCruzRider]

There’s no hearing test for licenses because deafness isn’t a restriction to getting licensed.

The way I understand it is that folks who are deaf typically compensate by being extra alert and more highly atuned to their remaining senses. Those of us who can hear but render ourselves temporarily deaf with loud music, cell phones, etc don’t share that trait.

[SantaCruzRider]

Good advice not to get distracted. I’ve got 2k+ songs on mine — half of them loaded by my wife, son, friends, etc. I set it to shuffle and you never know what’s coming up — but I listen to it without fussing with the iPod.

I have found that some songs make me ride faster. Especially true with anything by Britney Spears. I suspect it’s because subconsciously I’m trying to ride away from all the noise.

[gsmurfette]

That’s the Fing truth! Deaf people are probably better drivers than the average hearing Joe out there. I didn’t know that it wasn’t a restriction. Had never really thought about it.

[Author]

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