A recent poll set out to discover the top ten driving tunes favoured by motorists. The winner was Bohemian Rhapsody by the rock band Queen, which heads a list of similarly rousing numbers from the era of heavy rock music. Such ear-punching anthems have psychologists shaking their heads — not in time to the beat, but in dismay. For this sort of music, they warn, can cause aggressive driving. Armies used to play martial drum beats to stir their troops into battle, and the effect works in traffic too. If you hear pounding music that makes you want to drive forward when all you can see is the back bumper of the car in front, it's quite likely to raise both your blood pressure and your frustration levels. On the open road, fast music is going to make you want to drive faster. It's also going to make you more aggressive, and that's probably going to mean that you're tempted to take more risks. These arguments are supported by earlier research which examined the performance of young people aged between 17 and 25. The report concluded that unsafe drivers in this age group are more likely to go for up-tempo music with a heavy bass. But that wasn't all. There was also evidence that loud music played in a confined space, such as a car, could have the effect of blanking out that part of the brain that performs logical reasoning.