Sept. 24, 2008 -- Cars designed to be quieter on the inside could be tricking us into thinking we're driving slower than we really are, according to researchers. Mark Horswill and Annaliese Plooy of the University of Queensland reported their findings in the journal Perception. "The main design principle of making cars these days to be as quiet as you possibly can, is actually a real problem for road safety," said Horswill. Engineers and car manufacturers reduce the level of noise inside cars because they think it distracts the driver or interferes with the car's entertainment system. But these latest findings suggest this is a "questionable" aim. "By doing that you're systematically removing the cues that people are using to judge their speed," Horswill said. "They're feeling more safe and they're getting a sensation of going slower ... but of course the danger is still there." Related Content: More Human Animal News How Stuff Works: Laser Speed Guns Discovery Tech In their study Horswill and Plooy presented participants with pairs of video-based driving scenes and asked them to judge their speed. The participants heard either in-car noise at the level it occurred in the real world, or reduced in volume by 5 decibels. This is equivalent to the difference between the sound you would hear in a noisy car with the windows down and the sound you would hear in a luxury car with the windows up. |
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