A Scottish researcher used Project Gotham Racing to research the effects of music and sound on player performance.

The study discovered that listening to relaxing music slows drivers down, but the best driving is born of silence.

While the effect music had on the speed drivers went isn't too surprising, there were some interesting discoveries made.

I would have hoped that aggressive music would have made people drive a little faster," Cassidy said. It did, though it also made them crash into a higher number of cones and barriers than those who didn't. More crashes occurred when the player couldn't even hear their own car.

But the biggest surprise came when the drivers raced to relaxing music. "I would have maybe expected it would make them more relaxed and would make them more accurate," she said. It didn't. The change in music caused the drives to slow down to an extent, but it also distorted their ability to estimate how fast they had been racing. In other words, they thought they'd been driving even mellower than they really were.

Pedal To The Metal: Heavy Tunes Cause Gaming Fender Benders [MTV, thanks Stephen]

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