In the summer of 1982, I revolutionized my motorcycle riding experience. After ingesting a pile of microwaved Ball Park franks, I strapped a Sony Walkman to my hip, buckled into my Bell Moto III, and hit the new construction lots above my house in Granada Hills, California.
Everything was business as usual until I hit the play button, which caused the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” to rush my eardrums, full send. Immediately a pulsing heat drove through my body as my heart sounded the war drums. It was time for battle.
Before I could fully process my situation, my right hand unilaterally summoned full power from the 26.5-hp 2-stroke motor inside my now wildly excited Suzuki RM125. The landscape was a blur from that point onward. I can tell you, without a doubt, I had never gone faster on a motorcycle in my life. But as you already predicted, the magic carpet ride ended moments after the Zook clicked 5th gear, because that was the point at which I was magnificently catapulted from a jump-into-sweeping-right-hander section and thrown into a drainage ditch. And yes, I still have an awesome set of scars as a reminder.
When I reflect on that fateful day of minimal parental supervision, I’m still in awe at the complete lack of personal safety and zero situational awareness I exhibited. Somehow the music must have made me lose focus, coordination, and awareness within an environment I was intimately familiar with. Well, that was the conclusion I came to all those years ago. And for better or worse, that thinking stayed with me into my adult life as a motor cop, recreational street rider, and racer. Simply put, unless you feel like hanging out and telling jokes at your local ER, don’t play music in your helmet.
But I love music. In fact, if you followed me around you would find me singing, air drumming, and waving my hands like a drunken aircraft marshaller while I exercise, talk on the phone, drive my car, work on my bike, and do just about everything. Like it does for you, music enhances my life in just about every conceivable way. And while I’ve shunned it from the helmet for all these years, recent observations of my buddies swinging and swaying down the road to Steely Dan have made me feel like I’m missing out on an enhanced experience. Maybe the 12-year-old Quinn got it all wrong when he was jacked up on juicy, meaty franks, and playing music in my motorcycle helmet isn’t so bad after all? Well, yes and no.
While I do think that listening to music in my helmet can positively impact my enjoyment, it can negatively impact what is called “attention allocation.” This is the way in which attention is divided in a complex environment. Riding a motorcycle means we have multiple competing cues, and which aspects of the event we process will impact outcomes. In other words, listening to music may pull my attention away (however slight) from some of the critically important tasks necessary to ride the motorcycle safely. Bottom line here: The higher the workload, the greater the probability we could lose some focus.
But let me get back to the situation that birthed my auditory quest in the first place. When I crashed my RM125, I just blamed the music, tossed the pulverized Walkman in the trash, and went on with life. But should I have blamed all of it on the music? Would the outcome have been different if I had a loud 2-stroke engine screaming in my ears instead of the music? How is that also not a distraction within that rapidly changing environment? Furthermore, don’t most helmets generate enough wind noise at speeds over 50 mph to constitute somewhat of a distraction all by themselves? So why then does it matter what specific noises overwhelm my ears at the time? Maybe it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, how can we say that music in my motorcycle helmet proximately caused my crash, yet daily enjoyment of music while safely controlling my car (with the added complication of hands-free cellphone calls) doesn’t seem to be an issue? What gives?
Oh, and while we’re kicking this around, what about the years of riding my police bike at work, with constant patrol chatter in my ears every day? Although I would actively listen for any exigent situations that would pop up, it never caused me to spontaneously lose focus and panic-steer into rows of runaway shopping carts when alert tones screamed into my helmet.
Well, after years in the laboratory of life, I’ve come to conclude that: A) music doesn’t meaningfully contribute to the loss of situational awareness I already experience when wearing a bulky helmet that limits my field of view, my range of head motion, and my ability to hear (especially with ear protection in place); and B) music doesn’t singlehandedly degrade my coordination on the bike by stripping me of my ability to focus, evidenced by all the other things I can do in life while simultaneously listening to music.
So where does this leave us? I no longer believe music is a big bad monster; it’s more nuanced than that. Music is only one of many stimuli competing for my attention on the ride. The real predicament is that sometimes our situational workload will be very low and other times it will be quite high. We need to recognize precisely when and where that shift happens so we can make the necessary adjustments to mitigate a loss of focus when we need it most.
For example, if I’m cruising along a gently winding canyon road on a clear, dry day with no traffic and a long line of sight, music in the helmet won’t be a safety concern because my situational workload is very low. But later in the ride, when I find myself in heavy evening traffic while lane-splitting in the rain, I am faced with a far higher workload to manage, and my focus and processing will need to ratchet up significantly. You will see me go from a laid-back relaxed rider to shutting off the tunes (fewer distractions, better concentration), lowering my speed (greater perception, improved reaction time), dropping my windscreen (better line of sight), moving my body into a “ready” position (better control, faster reaction time), making sure I’m covering the front brake (reaction time again), and beginning to take slow, deep breaths (increased focus and concentration) as I navigate traffic. Once the coast is clear, I will reset into a more relaxed state, flip the cassette tape over, and let my freebird fly.
So go ahead and listen to music while you ride; it’s fine. But understand that it’s up to you to bring your knowledge, experience, and moment-to-moment assessment to the dance to determine when it’s time to shut out the distractions and focus on what’s coming your way.
For more information on Total Control Training and available clinics, go to the Total Control website. Quinn wears Lee Parks Design gloves exclusively. Find Quinn at Police Motor Training.
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