There are four interrelated datasets in this collection: In Study 1 we investigated the effects of musical characteristics (i.e., presence of lyrics and loudness) in the context of simulated urban driving. We studied the potentially distracting effects of processing lyrics through exposing young drivers to the same piece of music with/without lyrics and at different sound intensities (60 dBA [soft] and 75 dBA [loud]) using a counterbalanced, within-subjects design. Six simulator conditions were included that comprised low-intensity music with/without lyrics, high-intensity music with/without lyrics, plus two controls – ambient in-car noise and spoken lyrics. Between-subjects variables of driving style (defensive vs. assertive) and sex (women vs. men) were explored. The SPSS data file contains demographic data (i.e. sex, age, ethnicity), anthropometric data (i.e. height, weight, body mass index [BMI]), years of driving experience, estimated annual mileage, International Personality Item Pool (IPEP) items, Multidimensional Driving Style Inventory items, Simulator Sickness Questionnaire items, NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) items, Affect Grid responses (affective valence and arousal), Rating Scale Mental Effort (RSME) responses, word-search scores ('filler' task), HRV indices, simulator data (e.g. total time, mean speed), simulator trigger ratings (for five on-road triggers), standardised scores for variables and studentised residuals. In Study 2, we investigated the interactive effects of driving task load and music tempo on cognition, affect, cardiac response and safety-relevant behaviour during simulated driving. A counterbalanced, within-subjects design was used. The SPSS data file contains the demographic data (i.e. sex, age, age group [1 = young adult, 2 = middle-aged adult], personality [1 = introvert, 2 = extrovert]) for each of the 46 participants (presented with one participant per row). Behavioural measures relating to the driving simulation are included. These include the elapsed time (mins) for each ...