Almost every woman out there has had a friend or relative warn her that she is putting herself at risk every time she plugs into her iPod or other music player before heading out for a run or walk. I know I have. But I mostly shrug it off and plug in anyway because I can’t imagine going on a run or — heaven forbid — surviving a city bus or MUNI ride without music. Music keeps you moving and, most importantly, puts a nice buffer between you and the rest of the world when you need it most. But this story, which I found on Techmeme, and which originally came from Canada’s Globe & Mail, caught my eye because I always think for a split second just before stuffing my headphones into my ears and leaving the house, that I’m actually doing something stupid. With my iTunes library blasting in my ears, I become the perfect target. How easy would it be for someone to sneak up on me? Or for me to step out into the street not knowing that an emergency vehicle is barreling toward me because I can’t hear the sirens? I’ll tell you, very easy. And the latter is more or less what happened to some poor bastard in Canada. He basically stood there and let a helicopter crash into him.
The debate over headphone use is apparently not new. According to this piece, last year a NY senator proposed a bill that would force people to unplug while crossing a street. In my personal opinion, this is getting into bike helmet territory. It’s obviously better for people to wear bike helmets — it could even, very possibly, save their lives in the event of an accident, but I still see tons of people riding down my street every day helmet-less, seemingly without a care in the world. You just can’t force people to do what may be best for them, no matter how smart and intuitive it seems.
As for me, I’m the highly risk-averse sort. In high school, I used to stay home on New Year’s to avoid drunk drivers even though my friends all wanted to go down to Washington D.C. and celebrate with the rest of the world’s normal people. I know the chance of being crushed by a helicopter or attacked are slim, but I’ll probably start listening more closely to that little voice in my head and opt out of plugging in outdoors.
