Should you listen to music while riding a bike? I tested headphones and speakers while riding

hey everyone i'm tom and this is shifter a channel about urban cycling and bike commuting this is the only photographic evidence i have of this guy who rides his bike around my city i see him quite regularly in the summertime he rides his fat tire e-bike around the city and he blasts at seemingly top volume from an old-school boombox motorhead and i have a kind of admiration for this guy's self-confidence and also i like motorhead uh wondering if you have this dilemma in canada just like i do people cycling everywhere seem to have headphones earbuds and now portable speakers do you consider this acceptable while riding that is a good question laura and that is the subject of today's video [Music] for the record i have never not even once in my entire life i'm being serious right now ridden my bike with headphones in so my first step in trying to answer this question is to figure out am i going to get arrested nope not going to get arrested so here in alberta there is a distracted cycling law that forbids you from texting or reading or personal grooming on a bike but interestingly there is no prohibition against wearing headphones it does however discourage it wearing headphones while cycling is legal but not recommended you are less likely to hear emergency responders railway crossing signals and sounds that could warn you of danger and so i'm not going to get arrested but does that mean it's a good idea i don't know so my next step was to ask all of you what you thought so i posted a couple of weeks ago on the community tab of the shifter youtube page this question we've got a great response hundreds of comments and the consensus among all of you is there is no consensus you know there's a fair chunk of people who thought riding with anything in your ears is a terrible idea because it makes you less likely or less aware of your surroundings and you'll get run over however i was surprised by how many of you said that you didn't think that riding with headphones was that big of a deal and lots of you do it all of the time so with no consensus i thought i'm going to take it upon myself to figure this question out first up i'll try the most common type which are the earbud style headphones and i've got my old apple air pods here right now and yeah i'm a little nervous about this like i said i've literally never ridden with headphones in my life so let's hope i don't get run over but let's give it a shot well i'm surprised actually i i thought it would be more deafening with headphones in than it actually was i felt pretty safe i could hear noise of the city i could hear the cars around me into both music and podcasts just to see the difference between audio and music i actually couldn't hear either that well you know as you're moving and the winds blowing i really had to jack the volume up and then it got me a bit nervous so interesting i'm going to try now with just one of these in because that was another suggestion [Music] okay well one earbud is definitely different than two i could absolutely hear more street noise uh with one ear open to the air when this ear the open ear was against traffic i felt much safer than with the opposite this is definitely a safer option okay next up i'm testing these things which i have yet to even try before these came recommended by lots of you in the community these are aftershocks titanium and these are bone conduction headphones rather than covering your ears up it actually gets music into your brain into your head by transmitting it through your bone actually bypasses your eardrum so lots of runners lots of sort of cyclists use these headphones because they like that you can hear the music but both of your ears are open to the world around it seems like the perfect solution and lots of you recommended it so let's give it a try well that was an interesting experience so a couple of things that i liked about these is they felt much more secure on my head than those earbuds especially airpods are pretty good at staying in your ears but you know if you hit your pull up your collar or put a hat on they can fall out and if you're riding a bike bam nothing's long gone these things felt really secure on my head so that's good it's really interesting how they work your ears are open but it's not like you know you can hear everything still i mean it still does take up some of your oral capacity of that thing so it's not like a magic solution but it is better i also found that the audio on a podcast was much clearer on these and i don't know why is there some science behind that maybe one of you can tell me really interesting choice yeah okay here's a new thing i've never seen before and i'm looking forward to trying out this is what's known by some people as a bike helmet this is a senna x1s thank you to santa for sending me this one to try out but what's unique about this is that it has speakers built in right by your ears so it's a bluetooth connectivity it can connect your phone play your music or your podcast right into your ears they actually sent me two helmets this one's a bit of a different design this is more of an all sport design versus a bike one but these helmets can actually link up you can communicate back and forth sort of like motorcycle helmets through bluetooth you can actually talk to your friends this would be good on group rides i think or with groups of people you can all communicate back and forth i'm looking forward to trying these things out so let's give it a go okay so i've ridden around for a while i've listened to both music and podcasts with this uh helmet on and i gotta say i'm pretty impressed it kind of makes me wonder why this kind of thing hasn't been built before so the audio quality is pretty good i could definitely hear music better than the podcast especially on a windy day like this the noise from the helmet does get around you so people around you will hear it if you're like maybe you have a secret taylor swift fixation but you're kind of embarrassed about it you don't want people hearing what you're listening to you need to be aware of that but overall i'm kind of impressed with this i can really see how the connectivity between the helmets would be great too i'm really looking forward to trying it out with a friend so we can talk back and forth good job santa these uh a really cool option well it's getting dark and cold so i'm dressing for it just in time for the last test of the day and this is the simple plain can you call it old-fashioned old-fashioned bluetooth speaker jbl clip four waterproof super sturdy it's got this little carabiner style clip on it so you can just clip it on your bike and go let's give this one a go right now okay so there is the bluetooth speaker thank you jvl for sending this to me this is a good one if this is your jam the sound quality is quite good it's hardy i dropped it as i was riding the first time ever and it didn't phase it it seems just fine but bluetooth speakers in general my face is frozen i felt self-conscious riding with it because it's so loud everybody can hear it so it's a little awkward that way the sort of canadian politeness of me did not like that i felt a little uh a little obnoxious actually that being said it's the most fun it just feels more the most like a party it's like the music is out there for everyone to enjoy nothing was on my head or my ears or anything it was just like i was just riding with music so in that way it's it was really fun but also made me feel a little weird so there are pros and cons to the bluetooth speakers all right let's uh wrap this all up all right we looked at four different ways of listening to audio on your bike earbuds bone conducting a bluetooth helmet and a bluetooth speaker i know you hate when i say this but they all have their advantages and it sort of depends on what kind of riding you're doing i mean i've been transportation cyclists so um i have different needs in an urban environment than it might be if you are a roadie with your peloton out in the country of those i would say actually my favorite might be the bone conduction ones they seem to be the nice mix of all of those um elements pretty good audio best quality podcasting of all of them and it did keep my ears open to the environment uh all around me i would recommend those helmets if you like some audio and you want to connect with other riders on your group that seems pretty cool the earbuds were my least favorite i just didn't like having my ears plugged as much and i was worried about them falling out and the bluetooth speaker i would say is best if you're going on a party ride if there's a bunch of friends around you all want to enjoy the music together go for that otherwise it just feels a little maybe just a little obnoxious for me but that wasn't the question originally the original question was should you listen to audio while riding a bike and the answer for me is going to be no i don't think i'm going to in most cases one of my favorite parts of riding a bike is that it sort of gives me a break from everything else from screens and from input uh i just like the the disconnection that riding gives me i just sort of like the sort of sensory experience of riding a bike and um taking your ears out of that does change the experience of it and the third reason is for safety and before i made this video i would have said you'd be crazy for listening to audio while on a bike i've changed my tune on that just to change my tune see what i did there this has showed me that it's not crazy to listen to audio on a bike you can do it safely i think uh if you're reasonable that being said i think it does make your ride a little bit less safe i do think it does keep you a little distracted a little less of wherever you're surrounding so i don't think i'm going to do it so thanks for the question at the beginning laura the answer for me is i'm probably not going to listen to audio and that's just in keeping with my sort of philosophy and riding that just keep your ride as simple as possible a bike is a great transportation mode it makes your life better and happier and all those sorts of ways i don't like to overcomplicate it this this did feel like it complicated it just a little bit so that's my verdict let me know what you think and uh i think this will be an ongoing discussion for many many people thanks for watching see you next time [Music]

Channel: Shifter

Views: 97,001

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Id: 7Xb8FZzh7Mk

Length: 10min 39sec (639 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 21 2021