We all have our own preferences for what we listen to when driving. Some of us like to rock niche EDM tracks, others get around pumping only the most soulful Norwegian black metal. Others still prefer audiobooks for a more literary driving experience. As it turns out though, your choices could have a very real impact on driving safety.
The November edition of the Transportation Research journal features an interesting research paper from Jessica M. Kespe and Lana M. Trick. The researchers aimed to determine the relationship between the complexity of an audiobook and an individual’s driving performance on a simple route.
You might wager that the specific content of an audiobook would have little impact on a driver’s concentration. And yet! The study found that different books could actually have a notable impact on how well a given person handles a car.
The test aimed to explore concepts of both cognitive overload as well as cognitive underload. The impact of the former is familiar to most of us—when faced with too much to handle, we often falter at whatever we’re trying to do. However, having too little stimulation can also be dangerous. In the case of driving, for example, an overly familiar or monotonous route can lead to one growing distracted or withdrawing full attention from the driving task.
The methodology was straightforward. Drivers were tested on a simple course, and while doing so, they either drove in silence or listened to an audiobook. A range of audiobooks were used, classified as either simple or complex.
Researchers found that listening to a simple audiobook improved driving performance. Drivers were more responsive to hazards, braking sooner and better controlling their steering. The positive effect was noted to the greatest degree in drivers with better working memory, and this concurred with results from previous studies. In particular, a 2017 study published in Accident Analysis and Prevention noted that on a simple course, listening to an audiobook proved to have a slightly positive effect. However, the study also determined audiobooks could be deleterious to a driver’s braking response to a hazard on a complex course.
Along with the relative simplicity or complexity of the course, the simplicity or complexity of the audiobook is also a factor. According to the study, listening to an audiobook with more advanced content proved to have a negative impact on the test subjects’ performance. In these cases, drivers exhibited more steering variability and poorer braking response times.
It seems that the key is to stimulate the brain to the right degree when driving. A simple audiobook can keep one on task and focused on the road. However, put on something too granular and complex, and you might find your brain overloaded and your driving suffering in turn.
Our recommendation? Stick to banal comedy podcasts and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Save philosophical debates on politics and Finnegans Wake for when you get home. [Ed note: Why do we keep making Finnegans Wake references on this website? – MH]
Credit: Thue, public domain, Audible, Frank Albrecht via Unsplash license
I do enjoy me some soulful black metal on my drives. If the band logo looks like a pile of sticks it’s probably good.
George is in his office at Yankee stadium, he pushes ‘play’ on a cassette
recorder. The voice on the tape sounds exactly like George.
Voice: Chapter one. In order to manage risk we must first understand risk.
How do you spot risk? How do you avoid risk and what makes it so risky?
George: This guy sounds just like me.
Voice: To understand risk, we must first define risk.
George: This is horrible.
Voice: Risk is defined as–
George (banging the recorder): Stop it! Stop it!
Audiobooks that you’ve heard before but are engaging stories can be great, especially when driving two hours home after a 16 hour graveyard shift of dealing with inmates. On the other hand a boring or too slow story, looking at you Melville, can be incredibly dangerous after such a shift.
Two kinda tangential thoughts:
1) when I was 18 and went college visiting, I left the house at 2 am to drive up to Maine. That’s the trip when I learned just how fast my parents’ car could go – 135. I never turned off the radio, but at 135 I was hyperfocussed on my surroundings and basically blocked the radio out.
2) A couple years earlier, when I had only recently gotten my license, my mom, sister, and I were driving from PA out to IL to visit my dad. Somewhere in western PA it started to snow and my mom got uncomfortable driving, decided to give me a turn (in retrospect I question this a lot). I popped in my Navy SEALS running cadences tape and we listened to that all the way through western PA, through OH, through IN, and finally somewhere past Indianapolis I had to stop. Think my sister was going to lose her mind, especially when my mom started singing along…
My Dad told a similar story. The ink wasn’t dry on his license (1950s) and the family left one evening after my grandfather finished work to drive a couple of states over to see family. Grandfather gives my Dad 30 seconds of instructions and goes to sleep. Dad drives the whole way wide eyed and scared to death. And nobody died!
Given how many drivers have jerky and erratic movements on the road, I’d say they’re really into Book Toc audiobooks.
I remember being in high school and needing to read Catch-22 for class. Since I had some longer drives I thought I’d try listening to it on the road…and came to the same conclusion. Either I was focusing on the book and not the road, or the other way around.
I enjoy listening to audiobooks while I’m doing things around the house and yard, or working on the cars. But it has to be something I’ve read before, or I’ll miss whole sections of the book and have no clue what’s going on.
Interesting. When conditions become challenging, like iffy weather or tricky traffic, I’ve been known to shut off my audio entertainment. I wasn’t taught this, just “I don’t need this distraction right now.” Now I am usually listening to music, but in the same ballpark.
I’m the same way. I listen to alot of audio books, since I’m a long haul driver, but it gets paused if traffic starts to get thick or I reach city limits. I don’t need the distraction.
I only listen to music or news radio that I half listen to between traffic updates.
The point of monotony causing distraction, of course, also applies to “self driving” that still requires the driver to pay attention and suddenly intervene.
I’ll outright say it: I would be worse with dead air.
I can’t drive without a soundtrack or copilot; my mind starts to drift off and fill the dead air with random thoughts outside of driving. This doesn’t happen on a motorcycle, though.
Usually starts with attempts to hum old cartoons from the ’80s/’90s. And then I try to recall the plot of the original Transformers movie, and it spirals out of control into thinking of the last few Wikipedia articles I read and what led me to read about Dingo Fence in the first place.
Maybe read up on ADHD if you have a moment. That’s SOP for me. No meds but definitely ADHD and I really need to work hard to stay on topic when driving. Am safe. No accidents in 35+ years.
“ However, the study also determined audiobooks could be deleterious to a driver’s braking response to a hazard on a complex course.”
And we all know that real world driving never gets complex until the end of a chapter.
A few years back I was driving back and forth between Northern and Southern California quite a bit and I found that listening to audiobooks kept me focused on the road and alert better than listening to music. I listened to the entire Game of Thrones series, each book was 25-30 CD’s!
I drove a truck across the country and back for my employer. That’s how I did it too. GOT.
I listen to a fair amount of comedy, sports podcasts and the like when driving. Those tend to be perfect for driving without being distracted, as it’s more or less like listening to a conversation being had in your own car.
Shoutout to The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, lol. Just began reading The Chronicles of Narnia to my daughter.
So I should stop listening to NdGT’s StarTalk when bombing down the back roads of my commute?!? Not gonna happen.
If the suthors of this study had been named Jessica M. Treat and Lana M. Trick, I would’ve suspected this post was a Halloween prank. Sadly, I suppose it’s true that someone was actually paid to do this “research.”
You state that people shouldn’t have been paid for the research, and thus directly imply it has zero value. So, do tell, which of these best reflects your position?
1. Scientific research has no value.
2. Scientific research in psychology has no value.
3. Psychological research in the subject of attention while driving has no value.
That’s a great song by Mary Chapin Carpenter.
I got that reference.
Finnegan’s Wake is so overrated. Now Waking Ned Devine is the bomb!
Just last night I was watching one of those ubiquitous British detective shows in which the lead detective was suspicious of someone being an ex-con because they had Finnegan’s Wake and other weighty classics on their shelf. His reasoning? “Only prisoners have enough spare time on their hands to read Finnegan’s Wake.”
On long drives I plug in an old Android phone with about 70 albums ripped onto it. Don’t really care what I’m listening to as long as it it up-tempo and keeps me moving.
It’s mostly ’60s-’90s rock.
Nice. Now do a study on AM right wing anger radio and it’s effects on road rage.
I can attest to this first hand. My dad went through a right-wing phase post-9/11, and dear lord did he become world’s most outrageous tailgater while listening to that dreck. Can’t say I enjoyed being a passenger in any his cars when he turned that crap on. A white-knuckle experience for this guy.
I tend to shut off audiobooks when I’m driving through heavy traffic areas for this exact reason. Best case scenario: They don’t distract me but I miss an entire 20 minute section of the book, which makes it kind of pointless anyway.
Yup. Same problem. They either distract me or I zone them out. So pause and focus on driving
Horrorbabble. Best reader out there. Reads Cthulu mythos and such. Fantastic channel for filling long commutes.
I used to work at a site that was a ~10 hour drive from home. After making the drive a few times I figured I’d try an audiobook to break up the drive. I learned that trying to concentrate on a book while driving isn’t my thing. Tried old radio plays, not that either. Short comedy was fine, talk radio was fine (subject matter dependant of course, but the pickings were slim anyways) and music. Long ass stories required too much concentration.
Also this was 20 years ago so pre podcasts etc.
I find Brian Lohnes’ Dorkomotive podcast great for driving to. Not a character-driven tome I have to pay attention to, but a look at interesting people and machines. I’ve also listened to some of his YouTube history of drag racing videos while working on roofs