DEAR JIM: I’m 63, and I usually wear headphones when I take my daily walk. It breaks up the monotony and puts a little more spring in my step listening to some of my favorite tunes. I enjoy “zoning out” for a while and leaving all my troubles behind me while walking along the railroad tracks or the highway near my home. However, one of my friends – she’s a real couch potato – says I am going to damage my hearing. Is there any truth to what she says? ZONED OUT IN ZENIA
DEAR ZONED OUT: Your friend may be right if you are really cranking up the volume, but there is a bigger chance that you might die instead. No, not from the music but, rather, from what you don’t hear – or see – coming!
According to a new study released today – “Headphone use and pedestrian injury and death in the United States: 2004-2011” published in the online journal Injury Prevention serious injuries – and death - to pedestrians listening to headphones have more than tripled in the past six years.
Seventy percent of the 116 accidents in the study resulted in death to the pedestrian. More than half of the moving vehicles involved in the accidents were trains (55 percent), and nearly a third (29 percent) of the vehicles reported sounding some type of warning horn prior to the crash. In other words, the pedestrians didn’t even hear it – or see it - coming. Do you know how loud a train whistle is? Do you know how big a train is? Again, they didn’t even hear it or see it coming.
“Unfortunately as we make more and more enticing devices, the risk of injury from distraction and blocking out other sounds increases,” according to lead author Richard Lichenstein, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and director of pediatric emergency medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
The two likely phenomena associated with these injuries and deaths are distraction and sensory deprivation. The distraction caused by the use of electronic devices has been coined “inattentional blindness,” in which multiple stimuli divide the brain’s mental resource allocation. In cases of headphone-wearing pedestrian collisions with vehicles, the distraction is intensified by sensory deprivation, in which the pedestrian’s ability to hear a train or car warning signal is masked by the sounds produced by the portable electronic device and headphones.
So, keep listening to your music as you stroll along the tracks or the highway, but don’t get lost in the moment. Even the Rolling Stones aren’t worth a fatal bump in the road.
Jim Evans is a 45-year veteran of the health and fitness industry and internationally recognized fitness consultant. He is also a member of the Visionary Board of the International Council on Active Aging (ICAA).
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