> I ride with a comm system that I play media over and trying to be reflective of my past and I don’t see it.
One risk is your focus going from what's on the road to what's coming into your ears.
This may have some useful mental aspects if you're doing a long-distance drudgery ride down Route 66 with nothing much happening in between pitstops, but it's another thing on I-5 or I-95 with all sorts of chaotic lane changes going on.
Visual awareness is much more important for safety than sound especially once your at speed. Distracted driving is completely different and can happen anywhere. We should be arguing that cars should not have any speakers if that’s the case.
> We should be arguing that cars should not have any speakers if that’s the case.
Even speaking with passengers has been shown to increase traffic incidents:
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13698...
* https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3141/1899-15
* https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
It's a debate spectrum / sliding scale on how society wants to go, but at the very least one should be aware of the risk factors and be mindful of where your attention is.