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Singing in the car can lead to accidents

Driving experts had long believed that when you are on a long road trip and feeling a bit groggy behind the wheel, there were a few things that you could try to keep your mind focused on the task at hand.

  • Rolling down the window, letting fresh air into the car
  • Turning on the air conditioner rather than keeping the heat on
  • Singing along with the radio

Well, it ends up that one of the above may kill you.

Sing4: The Hits Edition
Sing4: The Hits Edition

Well, perhaps we exaggerated just a little bit about the last part.

But seriously, some Canadian researchers have published a study at the INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON TRAFFIC AND TRANSPORT PSYCHOLOGY that says that maybe singing while driving is a bit more of a distraction than any sort of help.

Their research showed that singing reduced ones’ ability to identify road hazards and be able to react in a timely manner.

On the bright side, they did find that car singers (or car-eoke singers) were more likely to drive slower and more likely to stay within their lane.

Web Watch can’t get behind the study, as the researchers not only discouraged singing while driving, they suggested that there shouldn’t be any sort of music listening going on while the car was in motion.

They studied people who were:

  • driving without music
  • driving with music
  • driving with music while singing

Driving while listening to music resulted in the slowest driving speeds of the three groups.  But if you did need to listen to music, whether you chose to listen to happy music instead of sadder music also had an impact on the drivers’ ability to stay within their assigned lanes.

Sad songs are the preferred choice for safety.  Just so you know.