Originally Posted by
genec
It used to be a bit easier to see if someone were wearing headphones... but now wireless ear buds can make that assessment difficult... and if someone is "rocking out" to their favorite tunes, it would quite easy for them to not hear all but the loudest "signal" from someone arriving on a bike.
Doesn't really contradict my point, though, which is the vast majority of people who do wear headphones on the paths just stick to the right side of the path and don't cause problems. Your point just indicates there's even more of such people. We're going to notice the trouble makers more, so we're likely to overestimate how "dangerous" hearing impairment actually is.
Not being hearing impaired, I don't want to speak for hearing impaired people as that would be patronizing and disrespectful, but I found it really obnoxious and stupid that someone would suggest banning "hearing impaired" people from being in public. My main point was it's pretty obvious that hearing impaired people have strategies for ensuring their own safety, and we hearing people may not even observe that those effective strategies are occurring. Also (more importantly, perhaps), people with disabilities have a right to be there, and we as cyclists have to be ready to react appropriately when our assumptions that we're going to be heard are going to prove wrong. "I didn't know he was deaf so I close-passed him" is not going to be a defense, legally or morally.