I had an interesting run-in with the authorities at the end of a long road trip yesterday. I had already driven approximately 500 miles when I reached a small town. It was one of those real annoying small towns whose only claim to fame is that you still have to slow down to 30 mph from highway speeds while passing through. The town has little or nothing else to offer. I was familiar with this particular town and knew that it always had a strong police presence so I took it slow through town and drove by a police officer as I was exiting the town. I was not doing anything wrong so I was quite surprised when I saw lights in my rear view mirror just a few miles down the road. Naturally I pulled over and put the car in park. I waited for the officer to approach my car and I proceeded to open my window. I got the classic "Do you know why I pulled you over today?" line and I replied that I had no idea. He said, "I pulled you over because I noticed you were wearing headphones." My response was that I was indeed wearing headphones. I inquired whether or not it was against any law to do so and I was informed that it was quite illegal to wear headphone while driving. Apparently this is not a new law either. Of course me being the person that I am, I had to get clarification. I asked the officer why it was illegal to wear headphones but a radio is acceptable. He replied that headphones are closer to your ear. So I asked if the distance from the speaker to the ear was the determining factor for what was allowed and what wasn't. At this point the officer was no longer amused. He just told me that he didn't make the laws he just enforced them. In the end he didn't write me a ticket, he just gave me a warning.This has to be one of the dumbest laws in existence. You don't even need to hear to drive in the first place. Deaf people are allowed to drive. Why can't I wear headphones? If I wanted to I could turn up my radio much beyond the volume that I listen to music with headphones. I hear people driving around all over the place with giant sound systems that rattle the windows of houses as the cars drive down the street. How is it that that type of activity is perfectly legal, but I can't listen to my music through headphones. I'll award a shiny nickel if anyone can give me a reasonable explanation to this issue.
2 comments:
I remember this law goin through Alex Tech and thinking the same thing. The reasoning I got was that the ear phones covered all sound, while listening to the radio allowed the driver to hear other sounds like say a warning horn for a train. Of course anyone who has ridden with you knows you listen to music way to loud to begin with, so in your case it is a pretty pointless law. Just like the saetbelt law.
Damn I should've used spellcheck
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