Quote:
Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger
I don't mean to be too skeptical but is there statistical proof to this or is it just an old wives tale?
I could see it being true and I think I've heard that before but never backed up with any actual source that shows that even with ideal conditions accidents are still at a statistical higher occurance.
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We used data from a tabulation of all traffic accidents in Canada as they were reported to the Canadian Ministry of Transport for the years 1991 and 1992 by all 10 provinces. A total of 1,398,784 accidents were coded according to the date of occurrence. Data for analysis were restricted to the Monday preceding the week of the change due to daylight savings time, the Monday immediately after, and the Monday one week after the change, for both spring and fall time shifts.
The loss of one hour's sleep associated with the spring shift to daylight savings time increased the risk of accidents. The Monday immediately after the shift showed a relative risk of 1.086 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.029 to 1.145; ξ2 = 9.01, 1 df; P<0.01). As compared with the accident rate a week later, the relative risk for the Monday immediately after the shift was 1.070 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.015 to 1.129; ξ2 = 6.19, 1 df; P<0.05).
Thus, the spring shift to daylight savings time, and the concomitant loss of one hour of sleep, resulted in an average increase in traffic accidents of approximately 8 percent, whereas the fall shift resulted in a decrease in accidents of approximately the same magnitude immediately after the time shift.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056...99604043341416
Taken together then, these data are consistent with the hypothesis that as a society were are sufficiently chronically sleep deprived so that a small decrease in sleep duration, such as that which occurs with the spring shift to DST, can significantly increase accident susceptibility.
http://www.mcmaster.ca/inabis98/occu...n0164/two.html
According to a McMaster University study called “Sleep Deficit, Fatal Accidents and the Spring Shift to Daylight Savings Time,” traffic crashes during the Monday following the weekend of turning the clock ahead one hour increased by a significant 17 per cent compared to the average Monday.
http://www.thestar.com/wheels/articl...ylight-savings