快猫短视频

SPEED kills. But it鈥檚 not only the speed at which people drive that鈥檚 the problem: the speed of the music they鈥檙e listening to also has a hand in their fate. An Israeli researcher says drivers who listen to fast music in their cars may have more than twice as many accidents as those listening to slower tracks.

With the car now the place where people most often listen to music, the research is worrying. While previous studies have shown a link between loud music and dangerous driving, Warren Brodsky at Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva, wondered if tempo had any effect on driver behaviour.

To find out, he put a group of 28 students through their paces on a driving simulator. Each student drove round the virtual streets of Chicago while listening to different pieces of music, or none at all. The students had an average of seven years鈥� driving experience.

Brodsky chose music with a variety of styles, ranging from laid-back George Benson ballads to the ultra-fast numbers beloved of clubbers. The tempo ranged from a slow 60 beats per minute up to a fast and furious 120 beats per minute or more. All the music was played relatively loudly to maximise its effect.

As the tempo increased, Brodsky found drivers took more risks, such as jumping red lights, and had more accidents. When listening to uptempo pieces, they were twice as likely to jump a red light as those who were not listening to music. And drivers had more than twice as many accidents when they were listening to fast tempos as when they listened to slow or medium-paced numbers.

Brodsky concedes that behaviour on a simulator may not translate into the same behaviour on the road. 鈥淏ut I think it鈥檚 got to be taken seriously,鈥� he says. He also monitored the drivers鈥� heart rate and found that it fluctuated less when they were listening to music of any kind compared with no music at all. This lack of variation, he suggests, shows that music is distracting the drivers and making them less alert.

So what should drivers do? Brodsky says they should be aware of the tempo effect and choose slower pieces of music鈥攐r turn down the volume so they are less distracted. The study has changed Brodsky鈥檚 own attitude to in-car music. He chose the pieces that he used in the study after listening to them as he drove to work. 鈥淚 could hardly control myself with some of the pieces. It was difficult taking my foot off the gas pedal,鈥� he says. 鈥淚鈥檓 now more careful in my choice of music.鈥�

Very little research has been carried out into how people鈥檚 lifestyles affect their driving behaviour, says Roger Vincent of Britain鈥檚 Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. 鈥淲e need more research into the effects of distractions in cars.鈥�