Turn Down the Music! (and Avoid North Carolina Car Accidents)

August 4, 2011, by Michael A. DeMayo

You think you do everything right to avoid getting into a North Carolina car accident. You wear your seat belt. You never drink and drive. You avoid driving while fatigued. You limit the use of your cell phone – or eliminate it entirely. You don’t even drive with a hands-free headset, since you are aware of studies by institutions like the Virginia Tech that have linked even driving while talking on a cell phone headset to an increased risk for accidents.

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But you might be doing one thing terribly wrong that increases your chances of getting into a disastrous North Carolina auto accident: Playing your music too loudly. Is it a real problem, or is it just a speculation? At this point, it’s speculation. It’s difficult to parse cause from association in studies about North Carolina car accidents. For instance, say you did find an association between people who listen to loud music and people who got into serious injury auto accidents. Would that prove your case? Not necessarily. It could be that people who listen to loud music also tend to be young, aggressive drivers who are more likely to consume alcohol, drive during the weekend nights (most dangerous times for accidents), and scourge traffic rules.

Nevertheless, one can build at least a circumstantial case that driving while listening to loud music is a problem. Here are some arguments:

• When your music is too loud, you can’t hear horns, noise from the street, signals from other drivers, construction sounds, etc. This diminished sensory input diminishes your capacity to react effectively to spontaneous and dangerous road events (e.g. car suddenly pulling into your lane).
• Driving while listening to loud music might impede or even destroy your ability to concentrate on the road. We don’t need to discuss yet again why distracted driving is dangerous – and how fatalities distracted driving is responsible for every year. But it’s not a stretch to suggest that blasting extremely loud music might diminish or even severely impede your concentration skills.
• Certain loud music can make you more emotionally reactive and aggressive. Let’s take two scenarios. In the first, you are approaching a stop light that’s about to turn yellow and listening to light classical music. Do you slow down and stop, or gun your engines and zip through the intersection? Probably, you stop, because you are calm. In the second scenario, say you approach the same intersection – everything else is same – but you are listening to the Pixie’s “Debaser” at top volume. Do you gently slow down and stop or try and gun through the intersection? Odds are you will be more motivated to drive the intersection than you would be if you were listening to classical music.

Getting away from the abstract, if you have a specific legal question about how to obtain a compensation for a North Carolina car accident, connect with an experienced North Carolina car accident law firm today.

More Web Resources:

Music and Driving