A recent Ford study showed how bad it is for every driver to wear headphones or earbuds while driving.
A European study by the car manufacturer has shown that wearing headphones while driving destroys spatial awareness, which could prove very dangerous in road traffic.
The study uses an app that plays “8D” spatial sound, resulting in a sense of realism through precisely controlled panning and equalization. 8D audio is used in conjunction with a virtual reality street to generate sound signals that the study participants must identify.
The keywords were played for people with headphones and for people without.
They found that those who listened to music through their headphones were, on average, 4.2 seconds slower to detect clues than those without headphones.
Even a few seconds delay is extremely important when you are on the road and could make all the difference between crashing into or swerving into pedestrians.
For this reason, many cities have banned the use of headphones for all drivers.
For more information, read the original story in CNET.
