Why do we turn the music down when parking?

Attention? Neuroscience? Talk about overthinking a problem. I lost respect for the article when it didn't use the word "noise" even once.

There is a little bone/muscle combination in your ear (??Tensor Timpany??) that acts as a gain control. While you drive, the background road noise causes your ear to reduce its gain. This makes all noises seem less and protects your ear. Then when you stop/park the road noise is gone, the muscles relax, and the music now seems louder. So you turn the volume down because it is uncomfortably loud for you, not due to any sociological or neurological factors.

This is why you need to turn the volume up in a convertible. It is also why people sing louder in the shower because, to them near the white noise of the water, they don't seem as loud.

And this process causes stress onboard planes or other constantly-loud environments. That little muscle in your ear gets tired. Stress around loud noises is partially a physical rather than purely psychological stress.

I'd like to hear it if I scrape or bump something. My parking space is really close quarters.

There's probably a lot more going on re: concentration and the distraction of music, but that's one factor.

Besides the distraction of music in general, there's a couple other factors going on. One is that parking is a relatively less practiced skill than driving, so it should naturally require more concentration. It is just plain awkward as well. Second, unless your stereo system automatically adjusts the volume level based on speed, the music will seem louder than when you were driving.

It has nothing to do with my ability to multi-task and everything to do with preventing me from getting blasted with music when I turn my car on the next time. I like turning on the radio and gradually bringing the sound up to the desired level.

One obvious reason is that I want to hear the parking sensors beeping clearly. :)

But in general when starting the car or parking, I want to hear as much of the sounds around me as I can. It's not that music is a big distraction, but it's blocking other sounds. I want to hear the engine of a nearby car, I want to hear kids running on the street, people talking, etc.

To concentrate better at the task at hand? Isn't it obvious?

What do you mean "we?" I certainly don't do this.

hand-eye co-ordination has a timing element. that timing element is based off of emipirical sampling from the environment. music is also structured in time, but it pollutes the time-sampling process when you do something like parralel park with limited visibility.the brain doesn't have enough bandwidth to process incomplete information sets (parking) and embellished information sets (music) at the same time.

TLDR: music is distracting (in this context)

Because I don't want to draw more attention to myself as I reach a destination. And to avoid the harsh feeling of a sudden cutoff of the sound. Distraction too but that's maybe 10% of the reason.

The sidebar picture seems like the 21st century version of Julia's outfit from 1984.