Singing in the Car Makes You a Worse Driver

You're out on the road, speeding down some highway or boulevard. Over the generic oldies radio station comes Elton John's Rocket Man, a song about the loneliness and isolation of a single man traveling out in space. Driving alone in your pod, you realize that you are just like that rocket man, zooming past people and places you'll never know and who'll never know you. "Rocket Man!" you belt out. "Duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh" (I never could understand that part).

As you sing along, your subjective mental workload increases, your detection of peripheral activities drops and even your speed falls. According to new research on singing and driving, you become a worse driver when you're singing in the car.