Driving shortens life expectancy

Even though people generally live longer, research has suggested that the more time you spend in the car, the shorter your life could be.

As with smoking, which is estimated to knock around five minutes off a person's life for every cigarette smoked, driving could lose you up to 20 minutes of life for every hour behind the wheel.

That's according to a hospital in Toronto, Canada where researchers used computer models to establish that the amount of time spent driving can shorten life due to the higher risk of being involved in a fatal crash.

In another attempt to get us to slow down, the report also said that reducing speed of motorists by just 3 kilometres per hour (that's 1.8mph) "yielded 11,000 fewer crashes each day, saved about $10 million from property damage each day, and conserved about 199 cumulative life years."