What is the impact on road safety when the clocks change for British Summer Time?
The October clock change will lead to an increase of some 20 more road crashes per day in Great Britain in which someone is hurt, past experience suggests. Analysis of police data from the past six years shows that in the two weeks after the Autumn clock change there were an average of 278 more personal injury collisions than in the two weeks before the clock change. Three quarters of the extra collisions occur in the afternoons, which will be darker because of the clocks going back one hour. However, the work by the RAC Foundation – which uses methodology developed by Road Safety Analysis in 2010 – suggests that worsening weather at this time of year could also be a significant factor. The number of collisions where someone is hurt and the weather is reported to have been ‘adverse’ is seen to rise by a similar proportion to the overall increase in personal injury collisions, though police will not necessarily have recorded poor weather itself as a contributory factor. The RAC Foundation study also shows that after the clocks go forward earlier in the year there is actually a significant fall in personal injury crashes in the morning – down, on average, by 221 in the following two weeks – even though they will be darker because of the change.
- Record URL:
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Corporate Authors:
RAC Foundation
London, United Kingdom -
Authors:
- Martin, R
- Publication Date: 2018-10
Language
- English
Media Info
- Pagination: 8p
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Crash analysis; Crash causes; Injury rates; Periods of the day; Weather
- Uncontrolled Terms: Safe systems (road users)
- Geographic Terms: United Kingdom
- ATRI Terms: Crash analysis; Crash cause; Injury rate; Time of day; Weather
- Subject Areas: Safety and Human Factors;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01688603
- Record Type: Publication
- Source Agency: ARRB
- Files: ATRI
- Created Date: Dec 17 2018 11:19AM