So why would a manly biker wear ear plugs on the road? Seems like something only a sissy boy would consider... ;)
Back in the day when I went tearing across the landscape on my Norton Commando with the cool high-rise handlebars and the throaty roar of its two cylinder 750cc engine echoing across the landscape, I never considered wearing ear plugs. Back then, and I am talking 1974, few of us had ever considered the effects of noise on our hearing. These days we are pretty easy to recognize in a group as we angle our ears just so, and try to read lips to enhance our ability to understand what you are saying to us.
I remember the feel of the wind on my face. I liked to go really fast, of course, and at about 70, I learned that goggles were no longer optional if I wanted to see, so I quickly added goggles to my standard biking attire. The wind noise, though, I just endured. Above about 45-50mph, I remember the wind noise being so bad that my rider could not make herself understood, even when yelling in my ear -- but even so, nobody I knew then had ever used ear plugs and it never entered my mind to do so.
Fast forward a few decades and bikers of all stripes have figured out that wind noise is not just irritating, it can be downright dangerous. For starters, it prevents you from hearing sometimes important stuff, like your passenger or rider next to you yelling at you to look out or turn at the next road. To make matters worse, hours of wind noise can permanently damage your hearing. Wind noise can easily exceed 100 dB, and at that level, just a couple of hours of steady riding can bring on tinnitus or hearing damage that can persist indefinitely.
The first guys to trip to the idea of doing something about wind noise naturally grabbed the most readily available ear plugs, which were usually disposable foam plugs. Foam ear plugs today are still by a huge margin the most commonly used kind of ear plugs among motorcyclists. There are much better options.
Here are a couple of ideas to consider.
First, what is wrong with foam ear plugs? Well, foam ear plugs do the job for sure. They block the wind noise better than any other kind of ear plug you can find. The problem is that they not only block the wind noise, but they also block the voices trying to send you a warning, the noise of a car about to run you over... even the sound of a police siren can be blocked by foam ear plugs.
There is one new ear plug from Mack’s called "Acoustic Foam" which intentionally has grooves in the body of the plug to let a little more sound get into your ear. If you must use foam, I would urge you to try these. They will give you a pretty good balance between enough protection and too much.
In the last decade, especially in the last five years, a whole raft of new motorcyclist ear plugs have hit the market, coming mainly from Europe, where biking is really big. That makes sense when you think about it... narrow winding streets, mountain roads all over that just demand to be ridden, and relatively short distances between places all encourage motorcycling as an alternative to driving a car.
These new motorcyclist ear plugs are almost always equipped with acoustic filters. An acoustic filter is a little passive device inside the ear plug that regulates the amount of sound that can enter your ear. Many of these offer variable noise reduction so that when it is quiet and you are talking, you can hear voices just fine -- but when you speed up and the noise level increases, the acoustic filter blocks more and more of the sound.
As a benefit too, these filtered earplugs let you hear many of the sounds around you, like your buddy yelling over to you, your passenger begging you to make a pit stop, and oh, yeah, the siren coming up behind you.
Acoustic filtered ear plugs often also give you two more benefits: they are vented, so they are less likely to make your ears sweat or to cause that boomy sound quality you can get from ordinary foam ear plugs, and they are reusable, so with care they can last you for many months of daily use. Though it probably matters little to most people, a reusable ear plug (that costs more when you buy it) will almost certainly save you money over the cost of foam ear plugs that must be replaced every couple of uses.
Oh, one more idea to consider. Right about the time the iPod came onto the scene in the 1990s, some smart guys invented the "isolation earphone," which essentially is the virtuous combination of an ear plug and an earphone. The business end of the earphone goes into the center of the ear plug, which is hollowed out to make a channel where sound can flow into your ear from the tiny little speakers in the earphones. When you plug these into your ears and into your motorcycle intercom or smart phone, you get both ear protection from the wind and the ability to clearly hear your music or communications traffic.
Last, and this is brand new -- Check out the Neckmike. This new gadget (thank you, Europe!) even lets you connect with your buddies (or with your passenger) via Bluetooth, and it gives you a full duplex two-way communications channel up to 1,000 meters (more than 1/2 a mile!). They are not cheap, but you have got to check these out. Neckmike will revolutionize your ride.
If your father loves the open road, help keep him safe! Get Dad some great motorcycle ear plugs, and help him remember to wear his hearing protection when he rides. And from all of us at Ear Plug Superstore, we wish you and your family a Happy Father's Day.
Until next time, be safe and do the right thing.
--Tom Bergman, Vice President and Father of Two
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