The Relationship between Listening to Music while Driving, Driver Impulsivity, Risk Level of the Road, and Behaviors and Risk Perception of Drivers

Listening to music is one of the behaviors that most road users exhibit. Moreover, factors like impulsivity as variables affecting human factors and physical factors affecting traffic environment influence risky behaviors of driver. Within the scope of the present study, the effects of listening to music while driving, driver impulsivity and the risk level of traffic environment on risk perception and driver behaviors were investigated. Data were collected from 50 drivers (37 males, 13 females). Participants were randomly assigned to two groups before the study, one with experimental condition and one with control condition. Participants completed a battery consisting of two different (low and high risk) simulation scenarios, the demographic information form, the risk perception question, and the Impulsive Driver Scale. Unlike music, dysfunctional impulsivity had a significant relationship with driver behaviors in two traffic environments with different risk levels. Individuals with high dysfunctional impulsivity showed higher speed in high-risk and low-risk scenarios and showed higher speed variance, used the vehicle to the left of the lane, and showed more lane deviation in high-risk scenarios. Findings showed that dysfunctional impulsivity is one of the factors affecting driver behaviors in different traffic environments and needed to be investigated more with respect to road safety