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Background Music Can Affect Your Driving Style and Make You Take Unnecessary Risks

We listen to music most of the time, and driving is no different. Scientists have discovered that the music we listen to influences our behavior, including behind the wheel. Sometimes, this can lead to dangerous situations, as the people at the University of Buenos Aires found out.
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Music is an important part of people’s lives. We wake up with music, we accompany all of our life events with music and most of us would have a miserable experience on a road trip without music. We can say the music is playing in the background most of our time awake and sometimes even when we sleep. This surely must influence us, and now we have the facts to prove it.

Researchers have tried to find out how music is influencing us, but the complexity of the matter made it impossible to conclude. Nevertheless, based on empirical findings, people concluded that the music style influences our driving style. A recent study commissioned by Kia showed that music can greatly affect an EV’s range, especially high BPM music. This is because we tend to drive faster when listening to more alert music.

Unfortunately, the vehicle’s range and consumption are not the only ones affected. More aggressive music can also increase driving errors for young drivers, along with the driver's ability to visually scan the environment. The Police in New Zealand even came up with driving playlists that promote safer driving music styles.

A recent study from the University of Buenos Aires has tried to narrow down the factors that change our behavior behind the wheel when listening to music. Instead of playing different music styles, they simply chose one tune and altered one parameter – the tempo. While doing so, they analyzed two individual aspects of decision-making: speed and accuracy.

During the study, a total of 32 participants completed a series of tasks three times: in silence and while listening to the same tune played at 40 beats per minute (BPM) and 190 BMP, respectively. The chosen tune was the classical, instrumental piece The Flight of the Bumblebee by Rimsky-Korsakov. In total, the researchers gathered data on over 100,000 individual decisions.

The main conclusion was that music, no matter the tempo, affected the performance of all of the tasks, making the participants take faster, but less accurate decisions. Moreover, the tempo did not seem to influence the decisions very much. This is interesting, as previous studies are believed to have found a connection between the music's tempo and the decision-making.
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About the author: Cristian Agatie
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After his childhood dream of becoming a "tractor operator" didn't pan out, Cristian turned to journalism, first in print and later moving to online media. His top interests are electric vehicles and new energy solutions.
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