Driven to distraction

The Toronto researcher who first identified a deadly link between cellphone use and car crashes has unearthed another threat to safe driving — the taxman. But don’t expect governments to do much about this one. On tax day, our pain has always been their gain.

Dr. Donald Redelmeier, at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, looked at 30 years of U.S. traffic data for their tax deadline day, usually falling on April 15. He found 6,783 people lost their lives in vehiclerelated mishaps. That’s 6 per cent more, on a daily basis, than before or after the deadline. Ouch. It adds a new twist to the inevitability of death and taxes. Redelmeier analyzed U.S. numbers rather than Canadian because their big databases are better suited to get meaningful results. But similar driving risks may well surround our own April 30 deadline, which is fast approaching.

So what is it about the grim day that makes it so lethal? Well, that’s unclear. It could be the result of desperate procrastinators, taking to the road at the last minute in a frenzied rush to beat the deadline. But if that were the prime factor, deaths would have dropped in recent years because more taxpayers are using electronic filing. In fact, fatalities have risen.

It might just be stress. We’re already under so much of it that the additional and unwelcome burden of enduring tax day reduces our ability to concentrate on safe motoring. It could be sleep deprivation. Or maybe some folks are driven to drink and, foolishly, to drive.

Then again, perhaps any big day is prone to fatality. In his earlier research, Redelmeier found that 24 more people than usual die in traffic accidents on a U.S. presidential election day. And there’s also a dramatic increase on Super Bowl Sundays.

Redelmeier’s latest effort, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association this past week, may not explain why tax day is more hazardous. But it does confirm what we’ve always sensed — it’s one day we wish we could avoid.