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# car tip
Want to stay a little bit safer while driving? Turn down the music
Research shows that listening to loud music can hamper driver reaction times.
LISTENING TO MUSIC in your car can certainly make driving more enjoyable, however, listening to loud music, no matter what genre, be it rock or classical, slows the reaction times of drivers.
As volume increases your brain is distracted and tends to give more attention to the music thus reducing attention from the task at hand, driving. One study reported that reaction times to tasks that involve decision-making plummeted by 20 per cent when carried out to music played at 95 decibels.
Let’s look at an example; the average reaction time for drivers is .75 seconds, which means if a car is travelling at 100km/h it will travel a further 20 metres before braking and slowing even takes place, however, theoretically, if you couple this with loud music over 95 decibels, the distance before braking even begins increases to 24 metres.
So, therefore, to keep that little bit safer whilst driving, turn the music down.
