[rawland]

Being unilateral deaf, I completely agree with your second statement.

There is one simple situations, where most of my hearing friends understand it: Traffic. Most people rely on their hearing heavily to navigate through cities. I don't. For me there is basically changing nothing with the upcoming electric cars. But I often grasp hard into my friends clothes, when there is an electric car coming and we're crossing roads. Meanwhile, I just say: "Oh, a Tesla." (which is not that common on European roads) and people stop. Way easier, than grabbing as much people as possible. Which is usually only two of the group.

Same for sports. In road racing, I'm very well at anticipating attacks and movements in the peloton. Often not only split seconds earlier than others, but whole seconds.

Besides these small upsides, I would give a lot to be hearing. There are more (socially) tough downsides to it [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unilateral_hearing_loss#Profou...