One of the rationales behind the no-headphones-while-you-drive laws is that wearing headphones drastically impairs your ability to hear emergency police, fire, and ambulance sirens that could be approaching your car. It's a public safety issue.

Yeah, it's a totally reasonable law, it just kills one of my true pleasures...I always rationalized it with the thought, "We'll, DEAF people are allowed to drive!" But I imagine their cars are all tricked out with ambulance-awareness lights and other cool shit...

"true pleasures?" Get a Life, then get a boombox, then get a new column. You're pithiness is starting to wear thin.

I think it's more about concentration and isolation than it is the mechanics of the thing. Headphones are isolating, much more so than ambient music in the air. No deaf person is ever that isolated from consciousness; they're probably more aware (and safer drivers) than we are. Same thing with phones -- handsfree phones in cars are exactly as dangerous as the regular kind.

I'm curious, though: what kind of pervert considers being within 200 feet of Ken Schram a "true pleasure"? I be happier if he was 100,000 miles away.

what kind of pervert considers being within 200 feet of Ken Schram a "true pleasure"?

A kidding pervert, who thinks the idea of stalking Ken Schram is hilarious, and might make a good documentary.

does anyone else remember that episode of ChIPS where ponch pulls a dude over in a big gold van for wearing those old school emu-egg sized headphones? totally wrote the guy a ticket.

The law does not prima facie make ear buds illegal. It applies to headphones that muffle or exclude ambient noise. Most ear bud type earphones don't - unless they have sound-cancelling circuitry built in. They may drown out the ambient noise a bit, but that's no different than having the stereo turned up loud.

here's the explicit language:
"which headset or earphones muffle or exclude other sounds."

If ear buds aren't excluded, what sense does the qualification make? The law seems to be drawing a pretty obvious distinction between headphones that muffle and those that don't. The most likely distinction is between ear bud like devices that allow ambient noise to pass into the ear and cushy-style earphones that obviously muffle ambient noise.

The single best investment I ever made was spending $80 on an iPod FM transmitter for my car. I just turn it up real loud and it's pretty much the same. I'm the asshole that never hears the sirens.

FM transmitters are cool until they break, like my belkin one did. Plus the sound quality is kind of shite. If you're going to put your ipod in your car you should get a harness that utilizes the aux-in on the back of your car's stereo. snake that cable into your glovebox (or wherever) and you can get way better audio quality.

"does anyone else remember that episode of ChIPS where ponch pulls a dude over in a big gold van for wearing those old school emu-egg sized headphones? totally wrote the guy a ticket."

I remember it well. That was one of the many important lessons CHiPs taught me.

The FM transmitters are nice because they're portable and offer flexibility on where/how you listen. Well worth the price if you get a good one.

Agreed that the Belkin ones are complete shit. The Griffin I have for the iPod mini is pretty good.

lol@ Charles

@ Kindaidos: good luck getting by on that logic. If the earbud is in your ear, it's muffling sound. I know this from having to ask my wife something in a loud voice when she's listening to her iPod.

RGS is right - just get an FM transmittor. I think the Belkin ones are the cheapies that don't work well in the city, but Charles' solution works even better.

Why do you need earphones to listen to your IPod in the car? Can't you get one of those adapters that plugs into the tape deck? (I have one for my non-IPod player - works great.)

I think it would be hilarious to stalk and pester Ken Schram. That guy sucks ass.

Ken Schram is a troll. Just ignore him.

New cars have twin iPod holders on the driver and passenger sides that plug into the car stereo systems.

If you were rich like the Bushies who steal from us, you'd know that.

the belkin transmitter i got was like 90 bucks, but this was a few years ago when the whole ipod-fm niche was just starting up. the thing was about the size of a brick and had an iiiiiiiity-bitty arm that supported the whole thing that you plugged into the dash. go figure the arm broke under its own weight.

@sean - unless you have a cd player with no tape deck, otherwise the solution you mentioned works just fine.

newer cars are going to have stock stereos that support ipods, its just taken the automotive electronics sector a while to get their design/production cycles current with the (relatively) fast-paced personal electronics industry.

personally I can't wait until cars have standard wi-fi so that you can form mesh networks over urban areas. that'd going to be sweet.

Ear buds ARE sound-cancelling. For all the high-priced electronic noice-cancellation circuitry that's available now, the best noise cancellation by far is still a good pair of well-fitting earbuds. I have a pair of Shures I use on planes, they work great. I wouldn't use them while driving, and if you do the ticket should have another digit on it -- how about $1117? That sounds fair.

A lot of the newer cell phones have MP3 player capability in them, and thus have stereo hands free headsets rather than mono ones. My suggestion to you, Mr. Scmader, would be to ditch your IPod and get a T-Mobile MDA or Cingular 8125. That way if you get pulled over for it, you can claim that you were not listening to music, but rather using a hands free headset because it's safer than putting your phone up to your ear to answer while driving.

Except, Tiffany, that it's not. Hands-free phoning while driving is just as dangerous as using your hands. It's not about your hands, it's about your attention. Listening to a phone conversation takes much more than listening to music.

It was so long ago that I don't even remember the name of the show. But have you ever been to a taping of Ken Schram's show in the KOMO studios? Dude's skin isn't leathery, it's CARDBOARDERY.

When I was in high school and didn't have a decent car stereo, I tried listening to my headphones while driving. It sucks! It was like smoking dope at the wrong time and getting a terrible, paranoid high.. always checking, checking, checking the rearview mirror to make sure that the whirring in my R Kelly track wasn't that of a state trooper or ambulance I had been slowing down, douchebag style, for the last two minutes. It freaks me out when people are wearing headphones while driving.

My driving instructor told us that deaf people have the best driving records because they have such great concentration. I don't know if it's true, but there you have it.

it's always been illegal.