New!
The Register online reported on an interesting study recently:
It seems that when a major music artist releases a new album of certified bangers, one of those bangers is your car banging into a tree, or a light pole, or another car.”
Yup, there’s a greater chance of car crashes on days of new music releases. Now, who doesn’t like streaming music while driving. But a working paper from researchers affiliated with Harvard Medical School showed an association between the release days of the most-streamed albums and an increase in US traffic fatalities.
Modern smartphones present new threats to road safety beyond talking and texting, but the real-world effects are difficult to study. Fatal traffic accidents and release days for popular streaming albums were chosen as an exogenous event that may offer an opportunity to quasi-experimentally study the impact of distraction using observational data.”
The team used data from the US Fatality Analysis Reporting System, which catalogs all fatal crashes on public US roadways, and compared that to data from Spotify charts, looking specifically at the top 10 albums with the most first-day streams between 2017 and 2022 (Taylor Swift and Drake each appear three times in the top 10, if you cared to know). And, they concluded, the total number of streams on the release date for major albums increases by nearly 40%. Traffic fatalities on those same days also increased, though by a more modest 15%. While a 15% increase might sound modest, in the real world that’s a lot of people dying because they were swept up by the rhythm and swept right into a wall (or tree; hopefully not another car or a pedestrian).
Of course, correlation does not equal causation.
So others countered arguing that new albums typically release on Fridays. And chances of folks partying and driving are higher on that day of the week. So … more accidents. But the researchers took that into account, too. They adjusted for holidays, day of the week bias, and even driver sobriety. After all that, the spike remained consistent among sober drivers and during both day and night hours. Though younger drivers were more likely to be part of this statistical pattern, as were those driving alone.
But there was another twist: A weird trend in the data showed the rise in fatalities was more pronounced in cars equipped with Apple CarPlay! Searchers suspect that in-car tech that mirrors your phone makes people more willing to fiddle with their playlists while barreling down the street. Watch out, ye iPhoners!
Said one reporter:
We spent years worrying about texting and driving, but the new threat is our collective inability to stop rocking out in our cars. While the tech and automotive industries try to find a way to thread the needle between safety and providing the in-car entertainment we desire, the rest of us should probably be a little bit more proactive and just hold off on listening to that new Taylor Swift joint until we get home.”
But there is one kind of new music that is entirely safe … and recommended!
Shout for joy, righteous ones, in Yahweh; to the upright, praise is fitting.
Give thanks to Yahweh with the lyre; with a ten-stringed instrument, make music to Him.
Sing to Him a new song; play skillfully with a shout of joy.
For upright is the word of Yahweh, and all His work [is] in faithfulness.
He loves righteousness and justice; the lovingkindness of Yahweh, it fills the earth.
Psalm 33:1–5
New music … and safe.
SOURCE: The Register; Vice Online
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching. 