Music can have a lot of detrimental impacts on people while they drive. It can be distracting, for instance, meaning that you’re more engaged with the song than you are with driving. This can cause you to make mistakes and end up in an accident.
Another thing that has been found is that fast music can make people increase their speed. It’s been recommended that you don’t listen to anything over 120 BPM. When people choose music that is faster than this, such as aggressive rock or metal, researchers found that they tend to drive faster to match the pace of the music. They also changed lanes more often and drove more aggressively overall.
Why is this a problem?
This is clearly a problem if you get pulled over for speeding, but why else is it such an issue?
The big reason is simply that speeding makes accidents more likely, and it makes the injuries suffered in those accidents more severe. So the odds of a crash increase with fast music, and the odds that someone in that accident will be seriously injured or even killed also increase. This happens because a vehicle that is moving more quickly has more kinetic energy, which is then enacted on the passengers of that vehicle – or the other car – in the event of an accident.
What if you’ve been injured?
You may decide to listen to classical music or to keep the radio off when you drive. That can keep you safer, but you’re always going to have to contend with other drivers who are speeding or driving aggressively. If one of them injures you in an accident, that’s when you need to know about all of your legal options to seek compensation.