Changing clocks bring sobering statistics
Drivers gained an hour’s sleep Sunday, but walkers have more to fear in dark
Is Daylight Time a life saver? Is switching back to Standard Time killing us? Perhaps more important, especially to parents, is switching clocks back an hour in the fall unnecessarily placing kids on their way home from school in harm’s way?
That’s the contention of SmartWitness, a British motor safety company promoting dash cams for safety. Their research, performed by former West Yorkshire, England, police chief Keith Hellawell, claims “stopping the clocks going back” could save “hundreds of children’s lives.”
According to Hellawell, more than 1,200 children have died in car-pedestrian accidents in the past 10 years and the peak time for such casualties is just after 4 p.m. on weekdays when children are heading home from school. SmartWitness’s research reveals that “the highest rate of vehicle usage comes in Quarter 3 (July, August, September) yet, despite this fact, the casualty rates are higher in Quarter 4 (September, October, December).” Even more telling, the number of accidents involving all pedestrians is much higher — 37 per cent — in the evening than the morning.
“When the clocks go back at the end of October, most schoolchildren are making their way home in the dark and this contributes to a great number of casualties on the roads,” Hellawell said. He also points out that in the equally short days of January and February, fatalities drop because pedestrians find some warmer method of transport.
With drivers and pedestrians both not yet used to the diminished daylight, Hellawell blames limited visibility for reducing reaction times. Most research in North America has focused on the diminished sleep time drivers get in the first few weeks after clocks spring forward, blaming it for diminished focus and poor reaction times. However, a 2007 study by the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh also showed that in the first few weeks after the fall switch, pedestrians were three times more likely to get hit by a car than just before the changeover. Like the British study, Carnegie Mellon researchers found the increased fatalities occurred only at night, with early morning and mid-day statistics largely unaffected. Indeed, they also found this reversed when the clocks go forward in spring.
In England, a private member’s bill that called for a switch to Single/Double British Summertime (one hour ahead in the winter, two in the summer) was defeated in a filibuster. But no, recent analysis by Britain’s Transport Research Laboratory showed “there was a net reduction in overall casualties, i.e. the reduction in the evenings exceeded the increase in the mornings.”
TRL concludes that “the effects of darkness are found to be greater for pedestrians than for vehicle occupants, and to be greater for fatalities than for non-fatal casualties.”
It’s a point to consider now that we have turned back our clocks.