Not so prepared after all

Car breakdown for hearing impaired drivers

My question to Hearing Link – ‘what’s the advice for deaf people stuck on the motorway? – was reposted on the Hearing Link facebook page where it received a lot of interest and response. If you haven’t already looked at the HL page, I recommend it as well as becoming a friend, or whatever the correct term is. I’ve resisted Facebook until now, but for HL I’ve changed my attitude.

I posed the question after Sue and I stopped on the hard shoulder of the M27 with a flat tyre last Monday. I’ve never been a Boy Scout or adopted the thinking of the survivalist community, but I do believe in being prepared. Before I got a car licence at the age of 34 I rode bikes, some of which were classics or much-mucked about with, so the tools and useful stuff I tucked away on the bikes did come in handy.

(Must mention, best thing I’ve ever carried has been my Leatherman Tool. Anyway, our first four-wheeler was a land Rover in which I carried tools and equipment enough to see us across a continent. In the Berlingo I can’t carry as much, but I do have three torches of varying sizes, a head torch, Duct Tape, Hi-Viz vests, foil blankets and lots of other goodies including a plug-in electric pump.)

So there we are on the hard shoulder in the dark, with traffic doing close blast passes through the pouring rain – no problem for someone so well prepared. I grabbed the smallest torch, hurriedly muttered to Sue to stay in the car (with my face turned away) and jumped out wearing a black T shirt and dark trousers.

Looking at the flat (which was flat, but I had to check) Sue walked up to me to see what was going on. That was when I realised I’d overlooked a very important, and obvious, eventuality – Sue couldn’t see what I was saying in the dark, neither was she comfortable as the ‘push’ of passing vehicles buffeted her as well as, alternately, leaving her dazzled and in the dark.

It was a struggle to communicate so I opted for pumping up the tyre and limping to the near-by services where I changed the wheel in relative comfort and safety. But I now realise the most important preparation is to talk about what we should do should we break down on the Motorway again. For deaf drivers on their own there are, as Facebook will show, safe ways of making contact with breakdown services and the emergency phones should all be loop compatible.

Don’t do what I did though, put on the Hi-Viz and select the big torch – it gives other drivers something to aim at.