August 19, 2026
Acharaporn Kamornboonyarush/Pexels
Traffic fatalities increase on days that major music albums are released, a new study finds. Researcher suggest this is due to motorists being distracted by their attempts to play the new music.
When it comes to the issue of distracted driving, people tend to think about texting or making calls. But it turns out that car crash fatalities also are more likely on days when big albums drop.
That's what a new study suggests.
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The research came about after Dr. Vishal Patel, a physician at Mass General Brigham and a researcher at Harvard Medical School, realized he was drifting out of his lane when fiddling with Spotify to try to play songs from a new Taylor Swift album. So Patel set about trying to determine whether major album drop dates correlated with fatalities related to distracted driving.
"I already knew the FARS database well; it's the federal registry of every fatal crash on U.S. roads, and there's a long tradition of using it to ask whether crashes spike on Super Bowl Sunday or Tax Day," Patel told CNN. "It struck me that nobody had looked at album releases, which are one of the few moments when tens of millions of people reach for their phones at the same time, for the same reason, for something other than texting."
More than 35,000 people die each year in car crashes. More than 3,300 of those deaths were the result of distracted driving in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Using data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and daily streaming figures from Spotify relating to top single album releases between 2017 and 2022, Patel found that those dates were associated with an approximately 15% increase in deaths from car crashes.
On average, there were 139 deaths from car crashes on days big albums dropped — such as Taylor Swift's "Midnights", Drake's "Certified Lover Boy" and Bad Bunny's "Un Verano Sin Ti" — compared to 121 deaths on other days.
The study tried to control for other factors, by comparing fatalities on album release dates to fatalities on the 10 days before and the 10 days after. It also took into account other contributors to distracted driving, such as alcohol consumption, age of drivers and number of passengers.
On days when popular albums were released, there were more traffic fatalities involving younger, male drivers and cars in which there was only one driver.
"I'd bet the physical interaction is the bigger danger, unlocking the phone, opening Spotify, scrolling through a new track list, tapping a specific song," Patel told the New York Times in April, after the publication of a working paper for the study. "That's eyes off the road and hands off the wheel."
"On release day, people aren't passively listening," he added. "They're actively engaged with something brand-new."
To combat the problem, Patel suggested the simplest solution is for a passenger to handle the phone, just like a designated driver handles the wheel for someone who has been drinking.
He also suggested that car makers and music streaming companies come up with improved design features and technology that minimizes distracted driving issues.
