Driving Distraction

Thursday, September 19th, 2013

Teenage drivers drive worse when listening to their own music:

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University in Israel recruited 85 drivers about 18 years old; just over half were male. The subjects were each assigned to drive six challenging road trips that were about 40 minutes long, accompanied by an experienced driving instructor. Music was played on four trips, two with selections from the drivers’ playlists, mostly fast-paced vocals, and two with background music, which was a blend of easy listening, soft rock and light jazz in instrumental and vocal arrangements designed to increase driver safety. No music was played on two trips. Subjects rated their mood after each trip and in-car data recorders analyzed driver behavior and errors.

All 85 subjects committed at least three errors in one or more of the six trips; 27 received a verbal warning and 17 required steering or braking by an instructor to prevent an accident. When the music was their own, 98% made errors; without the music, 92% made errors; and while listening to the safe-driving music, 77% made errors. Speeding, following too closely, inappropriate lane use, one-handed driving and weaving were the common violations.

The male subjects were more aggressive drivers and made more serious errors than female subjects. The teens played their own music at a very loud volume but significantly decreased the sound level when listening to the safe-driving music, researchers said. Mood ratings were highest on trips with driver-preferred music.

Posted in Science | 1 Comment »

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  1. Gwern says:
    September 19, 2013 at 12:32 pm

    “Background music as a risk factor for distraction among young-novice drivers“, Brodsky & Slor 2013 ; abstract:

    There are countless beliefs about the power of music during driving. The last thing one would think about is: how safe is it to listen or sing to music? Unfortunately, collisions linked to music devices have been known for some time; adjusting the radio controls, swapping tape-cassettes and compact-discs, or searching through MP3 files, are all forms of distraction that can result in a near-crash or crash. While the decrement of vehicular performance can also occur from capacity interference to central attention, whether or not music listening is a contributing factor to distraction is relatively unknown. The current study explored the effects of driver-preferred music on driver behavior. 85 young-novice drivers completed six trips in an instrumented Learners Vehicle. The study found that all participants committed at-least 3 driver deficiencies; 27 needed a verbal warning/command and 17 required a steering or braking intervention to prevent an accident. While there were elevated positive moods and enjoyment for trips with driver-preferred music, this background also produced the most frequent severe driver miscalculations and inaccuracies, violations, and aggressive driving. However, trips with music structurally designed to generate moderate levels of perceptual complexity, improved driver behavior and increased driver safety. The study is the first within-subjects on-road high-dose double-exposure clinical-trial investigation of musical stimuli on driver behavior.

    A copy of the WSJ article can be found here.

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