Comment by utopiah

Indeed not Apple specific.

That's also why there are different designs, e.g. in ear, over ear, open over ear, bone conduction, and technologies, e.g. noise cancelling, active noise cancelling, non voice filtering.

Typically there are visuals though, e.g. crossing lights for pedestrian, so the risk from the lack of hearing in a city is quite low IMHO.

FWIW in Belgium you can even legally ride a bike with earphones, which shows the risk is estimated to be very low.