A hearing loss can affect every part of your life, especially if that hearing loss goes undetected. Of course if you have a hearing impairment you’re cognizant of that. However, have you thought about how your hearing loss can affect the lives of others, including the people you love most?

For example, you are asked to babysit your grandchildren for the weekend while their parents go out of town. You jump at the chance, but if you’re among the one in three Americans over 65 suffering from a hearing loss and do not have a hearing aid, is it a good idea to be responsible for those children?

Surely your heart is in the right place, but what happens if you don’t hear a crying child, an intruder or a smoke detector?

To put your mind at ease, all you need to do is go to your doctor for a hearing test. If there’s a problem, the sooner it’s detected and corrected the better.

Another way you can be risking the lives of others due to an untreated hearing loss is by getting behind the wheel of a car.

Imagine a beautiful sunny day. You’re driving along, minding your own business when suddenly a car backs out of a driveway right in front of you but you don’t have time to react because your view was blocked by a cube van parked at the curb. You shout to your passenger, “Did you see that? Why didn’t you warn me?”

Your passenger looks at you and you realize that they did warn you but you didn’t hear them.

Maybe you have been slowly losing your hearing or your doctor hasn’t diagnosed your hearing loss yet. In any case, a hearing aid could have prevented this accident or one much worse where someone could have been hurt very badly.

Undiagnosed hearing loss is especially dangerous for truck, bus and cab drivers. Truck drivers are required to have an eye and a hearing test but a simple hearing test is not required for the rest of us who drive.

One of the symptoms of hearing loss, which can be corrected by wearing a hearing aid, is the inability to tell where sound is coming from. From honking horns to ambulance and fire truck sirens – do you find yourself trying to spin your head 360 degrees to tell where the sound is coming from? That experience is exactly like having a passenger that yells “look out”, without telling you where to look. It is nerve wracking and takes your concentration off the road in front of you while you try to find the source.

Have you ever looked in your rear-view mirror to find an ambulance or police car right behind you – and you never heard them coming? If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, you should go for a hearing test because you might need a hearing aid.

The sooner you receive hearing loss treatment, the more you can safely enjoy controlling that 2+ ton of vehicle.