Top Album Releases Linked To Rise In Fatal Crashes (theguardian.com) 86
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The release of a new album by Taylor Swift might be a cause for celebration among her fans, but such events have also been linked to a more sombre phenomenon: an increase in fatal car crashes. The team behind a new study say it sheds light on the impact of distracted driving. Writing in the journal Jama Network Open, [Vishal Patel, first author of the study based at Harvard Medical School] and colleagues report how they focused on the release of 10 major albums, launched between 2017 and 2022, selected for having the highest number of Spotify streams over a single day. [...] The team found streaming volume for the top 200 songs in the US was 43% higher on the date of major album releases compared with the days surrounding the releases -- although such data does not reveal whether the music was being streamed in a car.
[...] The researchers used data from a population-based registry of fatal US motor vehicle crashes to look at the number of traffic fatalities on the dates these albums were released, as well as for the 10 days either side. After taking into account the day of the week upon which the album was released, as well as federal holidays, and time of year, the researchers found the number of US traffic fatalities showed a relative increase of 15.1% on the date of major album releases, compared with similar days either side. "This is equivalent to approximately 182 fatalities in the US attributable to the release days of the 10 included albums," the team writes.
Patel said the release of a new album could distract drivers because accessing music is a search task, not a single button press. "You unlock the phone, open the app, find the release, read down a tracklist, tap the right song. That's several seconds of looking at a screen," he said, adding unfamiliar music also demands more attention, while research has suggested listening to new, high-energy music measurably degrades driving performance. The researchers add the rise in traffic fatalities was greater among certain groups -- such as younger drivers, male drivers, people who were driving alone, and people driving cars with a built-in infotainment platform. The authors say the results suggest that "online music streaming through smartphones may significantly contribute to distracted driving and traffic fatalities."
[...] The researchers used data from a population-based registry of fatal US motor vehicle crashes to look at the number of traffic fatalities on the dates these albums were released, as well as for the 10 days either side. After taking into account the day of the week upon which the album was released, as well as federal holidays, and time of year, the researchers found the number of US traffic fatalities showed a relative increase of 15.1% on the date of major album releases, compared with similar days either side. "This is equivalent to approximately 182 fatalities in the US attributable to the release days of the 10 included albums," the team writes.
Patel said the release of a new album could distract drivers because accessing music is a search task, not a single button press. "You unlock the phone, open the app, find the release, read down a tracklist, tap the right song. That's several seconds of looking at a screen," he said, adding unfamiliar music also demands more attention, while research has suggested listening to new, high-energy music measurably degrades driving performance. The researchers add the rise in traffic fatalities was greater among certain groups -- such as younger drivers, male drivers, people who were driving alone, and people driving cars with a built-in infotainment platform. The authors say the results suggest that "online music streaming through smartphones may significantly contribute to distracted driving and traffic fatalities."
Organizers (Score:3)
What do you mean, a search task? I just pop the CD in, and it plays. I mean yeah, sometimes I have to flip through my CD organizer at a stop light, but it doesn't take more than a few seconds.
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OK Boomer.
I read stone tablets at stop lights! I even carve them in traffic.
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Yabba dabba don't?
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I have to admit, my foot to this day gets VERY heavy when that song comes on...among some other choice "driving" songs.....
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What do you mean, a search task? I just pop the CD in, and it plays. I mean yeah, sometimes I have to flip through my CD organizer at a stop light, but it doesn't take more than a few seconds.
Even on a phone, if you're playing an album, you're playing an album. You search for it once, not over and over. A 15% increase in fatalities, if this isn't just noise that will regress to the mean after more data comes in, would point to people being distracted for an extended period of time... you know... by actually listening to the music and paying attention to that instead of to their driving.
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A 15% increase in fatalities, if this isn't just noise that will regress to the mean after more data comes in ....
Good point and well worth raising, but "Findings In this cross-sectional study of 233809 US traffic fatalities from 2017 through 2022" is quite a bit of data. Haven't looked at their statistical methods.
... people being distracted for an extended period of time... you know... by actually listening to the music ....
They should do a follow-up study of head-banger music. Seems like that would be especially distracting. Or what about death metal?
Re: Organizers (Score:1, Troll)
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A 15% increase in fatalities, if this isn't just noise that will regress to the mean after more data comes in ....
Good point and well worth raising, but "Findings In this cross-sectional study of 233809 US traffic fatalities from 2017 through 2022" is quite a bit of data. Haven't looked at their statistical methods.
... people being distracted for an extended period of time... you know... by actually listening to the music ....
They should do a follow-up study of head-banger music. Seems like that would be especially distracting. Or what about death metal?
Headbanger music tends to sharpen focus for me and several of my friends. I know that's not data, but I doubt we're alone in that phenomenon. So long as you're not trying to mash your way down the road, being a little more awake is a positive out there.
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I saw the turn immediately but dismissed it. I was so taken by the music that I felt invincible. It was only halfway through that I registered the danger and slammed on the brakes. I knew there was no way I was going to make the turn, but thankfully I managed to cut
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I had this exact problem. I was alone in my car, headbanging to Samael’s Rebellion on a mountain road I knew well. I was going a bit too fast down a long straight stretch with a hairpin at the end, but I had plenty of time to slow down. I saw the turn immediately but dismissed it. I was so taken by the music that I felt invincible. It was only halfway through that I registered the danger and slammed on the brakes. I knew there was no way I was going to make the turn, but thankfully I managed to cut my speed roughly in half, to about 50 km/h, before leaving the road and hitting a tree. I walked away without a scratch, thanks to very solid German engineering. I haven’t listened to music while driving since. I also keep a window cracked open now, just to have a little reminder that I’m sitting in a car, not a tank!
I've driven a ton of variety of vehicles, from multi-ton trucks and tractors pulling massive loads to motorcycles, and have learned to maintain situational awareness no matter what music I'm listening to. I don't listen to new music in a vehicle. I listen to things that I've essentially memorized through repeated listening, so it's easy to slip in and out of "background" to "foreground" listening based on conditions and traffic. I realize not all people have that switch in their heads though. Glad you made
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Back in the Stone Age I drove back and forth from MA to OH for college. AC/DC's Back In Black album saved my life on more than one occasion.
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A 15% increase in fatalities, if this isn't just noise that will regress to the mean after more data comes in, would point to people being distracted for an extended period of time
If there was such a thing as "National Close Your Eyes For Ten Seconds Day" it's plausible that it would have quite an effect on traffic accidents, even though it's just 0.01% of the day.
I'd agree that more data might make this disappear.
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I just pop the CD in
Is that an indirect way of saying you spend an inordinate amount of time and money performing maintenance on your old clunker to keep it running? Cars haven't sold with CD players for a really long time.
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I know a 2017 Mazda that still has a factor CD player in it.
And then again, often people put new stereos in cars...aftermarket, etc.
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I know a 2017 Mazda that still has a factor CD player in it.
When you have to cite a decade old model, you're not proving your point, you're proving mine.
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Sorry...I've never considered it to be "old" as a car....
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And then again, often people put new stereos in cars...aftermarket, etc.
Not so much, no. Modern cars have single infotainment systems that include the air conditioning, navigation, etc, all tied into one unit. An aftermarket system isn't going to be able to interface with the climate control system on different makes/models. My car is a 2004 -- over 20 years old -- and even though the stereo and the climate controls are technically separate components, they are together in the same (proprietary) section of the dash (no DIN or Double-DIN slot). Replacing the stereo means getting
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I put a CD player in my 1978 Triumph Spitfire 1500.
Unfortunately, due to where I had to put it (centre console), I could only change a CD when the gear stick was in 2nd or 4th...
.
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No, cars don't all have to be made to fail. I got lucky and bought a car with a rock-solid powertrain, never had any issues in 16 years, but unfortunately it's the rust that gets to it in the end. I think it's time to retire it this year.
Funny, though, it seems like modern cars need 10x more maintenance than my "old clunker" ever did.
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No, cars don't all have to be made to fail.
Of course they do. Everything fails. Everything has a useful life, regardless of how you make it. Statistically at the *long* end of car life expectancy you're looking at around 16 years. On average you're closer to 12-14 max for a car. A few edge cases doesn't change this fact.
It's getting to the point now that in western countries more cars on the road now don't have CD players in them anymore for that reason.
By the way no car was ever made to fail. People often mis-cite a known case of Ford specifically
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What happens when your 6-disc changer is in the trunk, though? And it starts skipping? :-(
Re: Organizers (Score:2)
Re: Organizers (Score:2)
That's why I'll never get a modern car that checks my attention.
Makes it hard to change my CDs on the fly.
Re: Organizers (Score:3)
It's clearly all the superfans who hear that there's a new album and immediately drive into their local record store. (Rather than doing the sensible, calm thing and entering the store on foot.)
CDs are ancient history (Score:2)
CDs are ancient history and you likely (notes UID) came of age when driving (and license testing) was taken a bit more seriously.
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CD? I just pop in an 8-track. Much cheaper.
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Well Patel is one of the most common surnames in India, that said it originated from a farming community so they probably are all related ;-)
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Nice to see that racist cunts are still alive and well.
The Trial Lawyers have a new $B lawsuit. (Score:2)
Re: The Trial Lawyers have a new $B lawsuit. (Score:3)
The data analysis appears to be correct. What makes it propaganda?
What?! (Score:2)
Is this how Gen Z does it? They do know what playlists are, right?
Most people should not be driving cars (Score:4, Insightful)
But without decent public transportation or reliable eyes-off autonomous driving, we're going to continue to waste money and human life on distracted driving.
While I would love to believe that getting the word out with public service announcements to improve the public's general awareness of the risks of distracted driving, or actively reworking our training and licensing programs. The cynic in me knows in my bones that most people think they are above average drivers, and that people will feel that raising the requirements to get a license is somehow unfair.
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Spotify's UI sucks. (Score:4, Interesting)
And before I leave, I always make sure it's set to that playlist as I switch to alternative playlists when I'm doing other tasks, and it's incredibly difficult to try and change playlists while driving, I learned my lesson a long time ago and I just pull over or mute the stereo entirely and sit in silence. (No, I've never had an accident before, but I don't need to, to know that trying to navigate a touch screen while driving is a bad idea, even at very low speeds).
For some stupid reason as well the user interface is different per phone device, my partner hates it on a new whatever the fuck Samsung's new flip phone is, because the seek bar is a wobbly groove for some stupid reason, and the album art is in the wrong spot and for some stupid reason they keep insisting on changing the interface because product managers have to justify their job....
I usually have it where if I'm driving with my partner, I get her to set the playlist, but she always puts her trash music on.
Google for some stupid reason also decided to give me Gemini so trying to set navigation through voice commands is an impossible task until I changed it back, it's still not perfect but it's better than arguing with a clanker.
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Google for some stupid reason also decided to give me Gemini so trying to set navigation through voice commands is an impossible task until I changed it back
I have the opposite experience. The old Google Assistant lacked context to questions. If you said "Play Taylor Swift's new album" you'd get a response saying that it can't find an album with that name by Taylor Swift. On the flip side Gemini will search contextually and find out the album name.
It cuts both ways though, I asked Gemini while driving how much time I'd save taking the toll road and it proceeded to Google search some marketing materials on how the expected trips were going to be cut by the toll
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I have a single playlist that I play all the time and if a song that's playing that I don't like or don't feel in the mood for I skip it, using the physical buttons on my steering wheel, and not taking my eyes off the road
my use case is very much the same as yours without any of the problems which funnily boil down to just one thing: spotify. yeah, i'm a boomer but not using cds, just good old-fashioned audio files stored on my phone and a decent old-fashioned player app, works like a charm. even switching playlists is just a few taps but i never do this if i'm alone unless the car is stopped for some reason, it wouldn't even cross my mind.
i've tried spotify a couple of times, never liked it at all. which is fine, horses for
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Let's do the time warp again (Score:5, Informative)
I thought this sounded familiar: it was reported in a working paper from the NBER in February [nber.org], by Harvard in March [harvard.edu], and by The Smithsonian magazine in April [smithsonianmag.com]. So apparently this is either the final version of a paper previously in progress, or they're working their way up the chain of high-impact journals. They must have some good publicists. Obviously I need to find some way to work Taylor Swift into my group's papers.
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The final phase will be a retraction when it turns out they threw out data they didn't like, or analyzed it wrong.
Save Lives, Ban Taylor Swift (Score:1)
I've been advocating for this all along.
We must listen to 80's tunes forever. (Score:5, Funny)
If it saves even one life, it's worth whatever it costs.
And no, I don't mean keep releasing new songs dubbed over Genius of Love. That already happens too frequently.
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You forgot: Think of the children!
Keep your hands above the podium when you say that, you pervert!
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Okay funny, but the joke I was looking for was rage-induced suicides. Some sort of road rage joke...
I'll check back tomorrow in hopes more funny has blossomed on this rich target.
Nobody said it yet? Correlation does not mean... (Score:2)
Re: Nobody said it yet? Correlation does not mean (Score:2)
The summary said they did not have a mechanism for causation. The summary said "linked". Several causes were theorized but would need study.
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'Linked' may be too strong
Associated, correlated, OK.
Like ice cream sales are 'linked' with crime rates.
Which is just a textbook example of "ignoring a common cause".
Social Science papers are more abour PR and H-index today than stats.
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Causation.
Probably because it was addressed in the summary, and probably because the people who parrot this every time a correlation study is performed typically have a low-IQ approach to reading about any study and just how much effort goes into ensuring many obvious causes are excluded from the data set (also in TFS, which you didn't read).
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Drivers are stupid (Score:2)
I've watched someone drive a car which I know has perfect voice integration with Spotify fumble around with their infotainment system while driving even using an on screen keyboard (one of the most attention demanding tasks on a touch screen).
When they simply could have pressed the little voice button on the wheel and said "Play ${artists} new album." at which point the voice assistant says "Ok, playing ${artist} ${album} on Spotify".
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That has much more to do with people being creatures of habit than being stupid.
I'm old enough to have spent a long time driving cars before voice recognition was a thing. Probably dating myself here, but I remember how excited my friend was when he got a new Nissan Z car and it actually spoke to him, saying things like "Your fuel is low!" and "The door is ajar!"
I spent years trying to utilize voice recognition systems when they came out, and was consistently frustrated. Some required I memorize their speci
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Voice systems in cars have been trash for decades, so people stopped even trying. Now they're probably just using the assistant on your phone via CarPlay / Android Auto, but reputationally the damage has been done for millions of drivers - these systems have been absolute shit for so long that most people don't even try.
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Just clicked on this... (Score:3)
...for the sarcasm.
And I must say, I'm not disappointed.
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Tune into the News at 11 where we ask, is water really wet?
The correct title for this article (Score:2)
Reading Lyrics? (Score:2)
I have a hard time believing people are looking at their phones that much to skip/repeat tracks and whatnot, especially given that most cars have buttons that let a driver do that without taking their eyes off the road. I'm wondering if people keep glancing at the lyrics, that's all I can think of that would grab a driver's attention enough for a 15% increase in accidents.
Re: Reading Lyrics? (Score:1)
Just focusing on new music has previously been shown to cause distraction, according to references in the article. It is unknown if that effect is strong enough to account for theses stats.
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Nothing newer than Bach allowed while I'm driving.
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The assumption is that using your phone / infotainment system to search for, possibly purchase, and play a new release is an attention-demanding task that takes substantial time. The consensus above is that Spotify's UI, in particular, is poor, and thus requires extra interaction, and thus attention off the road, exacerbating the problem. We know that attending to a phone, even briefly, is mutually exclusive to attending to the road. That alone is an explanatory mechanism for the increase in fatalities.
B
so ... new album releases are ... (Score:2)
killer?
Solution (Score:1, Troll)
Ban all forms of ICE
Whether its In Car Entertainment, Immigration and Customs Enforcers, Internal Combustion Engines, or frozen H20 on the road surface
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Why do you want to ban my beloved multimeter [radiomuseum.org] ?!? You, insensitive clod...
Really? (Score:2)
Granted, Taylor Swift sounds like someone set a cat on fire, but I don't think she regularly causes fatal wrecks.
Occasionally, maybe.
Spotify's horrible UI (Score:2)
Every time I open Spotify I want to throw my phone on the floor and smash it with a hammer. They're cramming too much into that tiny UI, and most of it is not useful to me.
If there's a direct correlation between teens using Spotify and car wrecks, I'm not surprised.
Search requires two taps. You can tap search twice to get the search dialog directly, but doing that without looking at the screen is impossible.
Spotify supposedly has a full "Hey Spotify" voice assistant, but I can't figure out how to enable it
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the phone is connected to the car's ICE system via bluetooth, the car is moving == driving mode - no screen interaction, voice interaction only.
What about a passenger?
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They can do what they want, it's not their phone that's in drive mode.
Swiftie Mob (Score:3)
I am picturing cars full of Taylor Swift fans ramming and running off the road other cars that are not playing the new album on release day... Fatality!
Just another instance of human derivers being bad (Score:2)
Personally, I cannot wait for them to become obsolete. The tech is slowly getting there.
Darwin? (Score:2)
But if these fatalities are Swift fans, isn't that self limiting Darwinian natural selection?
Hands free (Score:2)
The command "Hey Google, on the music app that I normally use, play the Jethro Tull album, Aqualung", doesn't work.
It's the kind of thing you think might work - especially with the latest AI capabilities - but it doesn't.
Firstly, it won't do anything like this before you manually unlock your phone. And Secondly, while it can respond to a "Play the Jethro Tull album, Aqualung", which it will try to do on Google YouTube Music, it doesn't seem to be able to comply with the "on the music app I normally use" par
So Spotify ADs do kill people. (Score:1)
With my past experience with Spotify, I read the data as;
A new album comes out, people try to use Spotify to listen to it, halfway into the song it is cut short and an advertisement plays at full volume, they look at their phone to see what the fck is going on, then CRUNCH!