"A man's silence is wonderful to listen to." - Thomas Hardy

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Should deaf people be allowed to ride motorcycles? (or drive cars too, for the anal)

Earlier, some of us ordered dinner via delivery service, and the person at the despatch centre told me that the deliveryman would give me an SMS but not a call.

Later when the deliveryman came, I asked him a question but he did not reply and just gestured vaguely at the bill.

Coupled with the fact that the company proudly proclaims that they are socially responsible and employ people with disabilities (perhaps because they can pay them less due to their reduced bargaining power), I concluded that he was deaf.

For those who do not understand why it might be thought that we should deny driving licenses to deaf people, the answer is very simple: horns. Although horns are often not used for their intended purposes, there are many times when they are used to warn other motorists about some danger, past present or future.

Whereas, if you do not use a seatbelt or motorcycle helmet (e.g. Sikhs), you are only putting yourself at risk (discounting the greater disutility of splattered brains on others' windshields, or the freak possibility of your body becoming a human projectile and sailing out of a shattered windscreen into other people or objects), if you cannot hear horns not only you but other people's property and lives are at risk. Ambulances and police vehicles aren't as much of a worry because they have flashing strobe lights

In Singapore, at least, I think you cannot drive if you have any degree of night blindness, no matter how mild it is. This despite almost all roads being well-lit and cars having headlights. I don't know about colour blindness, but I'm sure it depends on your degree and type of colour blindness (and anyway the relative positioning of red, amber and green lights is pretty much fixed). I do know that we ban people whose eyesight is deficient beyond a certain level (about degree 1000, IIRC) from driving. Where deafness is concerned though, I have no idea.

One objection might be that we should also ban deaf people from crossing roads, but then when you cross the road you look around you. Also, if you have no driving license there're alternate, convenient means of transport (this being Singapore and not the cornfields of Illinois). If you can't cross the road people might bring you across, or you could use overhead bridges or underpasses, but the inconvenience is much greater than that of not having a license.

Another objection is that we should also ban people who ride or drive with earphones or headphones. To this, I will say that not all earphones are equal, and not all block out all ambient sound (unless you pay >$100). In any case, driving while holding a mobile phone is not only banned, you go to court if you do it - we could plausibly do the same if you drove or rode with both ears plugged.

Yet another quibble is that some people drive while playing music at top volume. We can't enforce a ban on ultra-loud music so we shouldn't ban deaf people from the roads. Yet, this is like saying that we can't live forever so we should kill ourselves now (or work, smoke, eat, drink and drug ourselves to death).

Some might say that we don't *need* horns to drive safely. That might be true, but we don't *need* many things (see above about colour and night blindness). Also, power braking, hazard lights, brake lights, turning signals, unleaded fuel and more have various degrees of necessity/usefulness. If you want to say people rarely use their horns properly, you can also say that people rarely ever signal that they are going to turn and thus that turning lights are useless.

Lastly, you might say that people who are not deaf make the roads even more dangerous than deaf motorists. That may be true, but if you are a danger to other road users your license gets taken away and you may even be prosecuted, so mechanisms already exist for dealing with such people.

Of course, it is possible that the rider was not totally deaf and he could hear loud sounds; he did not take off his helmet to call me or reply to me because he was lazy. Yet, this seems implausible since a motorcycle helmet does not take *that* long to take off.

At the end of the day, the question probably is: how far are we willing to trade road safety for a desire to be inclusive? Some countries are willing to let deaf people drive; others are not.

At the very least though, we need signs on vehicles to indicate that the drivers are deaf (I didn't see if his motorcycle was special).


Tips on Car Care & Safety for Deaf Drivers


UPS must hire deaf drivers

"The ruling puts employers in a "damned if they do and damned if they don't" situation, said Joe Beachboard, a Los Angeles lawyer who represents employers.

If UPS doesn't employ deaf workers as drivers, it can be sued under the disability act, he said. But if a deaf UPS driver has a serious accident, the company also could be sued."