The Israeli police will turn hearing aids into a popular fashion

For me personally, this is not a rant, because I use neither hearing aids nor MP3 players.

Recently, the Israeli police began issuing citations to people, who cross roads while listening to music using MP3 players.

The news item about this subject (written in Hebrew) has several talkbacks asking what about deaf people, how will the policemen tell hearing aids apart from MP3 players, and generally complaining about the screwed up law enforcement priorities of the Israeli police.

One possible consequence of the new policy is that MP3 players, which look like hearing aids, and earpiece, which look like hearing aid earpieces, will become popular – as people will try to impersonate as hard of hearing in order to evade the 100 NIS fines associated with being cited for crossing a road while listening to music.

Author: Omer Zak

I am deaf since birth. I played with big computers which eat punched cards and spew out printouts since age 12. Ever since they became available, I work and play with desktop size computers which eat keyboard keypresses and spew out display pixels. Among other things, I developed software which helped the deaf in Israel use the telephone network, by means of home computers equipped with modems. Several years later, I developed Hebrew localizations for some cellular phones, which helped the deaf in Israel utilize the cellular phone networks. I am interested in entrepreneurship, Science Fiction and making the world more accessible to people with disabilities.

2 thoughts on “The Israeli police will turn hearing aids into a popular fashion”

    1. I feel alarmed by the deafnessresearch.org.uk article cited above. The article suggests that hearing is essential for safe road crossing. Such an attitude may result in all kinds of restrictions on the movement of deaf people, making them more handicapped than they are today. I doubt whether advocates of such policies would underwrite the extra disability payments, to which deaf people would be entitled if they become more handicapped (i.e. they lose some earning ability) due to those policies.

      The real lesson MP3 users should be taught is to pay visual attention at all times, whether they are crossing a road or not.

      Contrary to what several people think, hearing is neither necessary nor sufficient for safe motoring (car driving) or road crossing. Concentration is what is necessary. This is evidenced by the fact that deaf drivers have lower (!) accident rate than the general population – they naturally pay more visual attention to their surroundings, to compensate for lack of audible signals.

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