What kind of helmet have you been wearing that causes loss of hearing and wind noise? That's news to me - I've been cycling with a helmet for 15+ years and have never had a helmet (gone through a bunch of them) that's made any noise. Quite the opposite of you, if I'm on a bike without a helmet I don't feel safe. Been biking in Austria, Poland, London for years.
“My question is, you are covered from head to toe in protective padding. So why don’t you wear a helmet?”
“The suit’s got a cervical airbag that blows up when you fall off the board, so you can bounce on your head. Besides, helmets feel weird. They say it doesn’t affect your hearing, but it does.”
“You use your hearing quite a bit in your line of work?”
“Definitely, yeah.”
Uncle Enzo is nodding. “That’s what I suspected. We felt the same way, the boys in my unit in Vietnam.”
[…]
“Our job was to go through the jungle making trouble for some slippery gentlemen carrying guns bigger than they were. Stealthy guys. And we depended on our hearing, too—just like you do. And you know what? We never wore helmets.”
“Same reason?”
“Exactly. Even though they didn’t cover the ears, really, they did something to your sense of hearing. I still think I owe my life to going bareheaded.”
It's not total hearing loss, but it catches the wind which makes noise once you're going a reasonable speed. Similar to the noise you experience if you orient your head the wrong way when there is a reasonable amount of wind going by you, but you can't get rid of it by turning your head. I also find I'm much worse at pinpointing direction all the time with it on (presumably because of sound bouncing off of it... since ear's generally pinpoints sound via echo).
I've found other people who agree with me on this, and other people who don't notice it. My best guess is that the people who don't notice it just never learnt to use sound as such an important queue while biking, particularly with respect to direction, but I don't know.
