Isocat<p>Most of North America turned the clock back an hour last night—an annual ritual which, contrary to a rich variety of folk explanations, actually serves to thin and cull the pedestrian herd so it doesn’t grow too large.</p><p>That’s a not-very-funny joke. In all seriousness, pedestrian deaths spike high every Autumn in direct coincidence with setting back the clocks to ‘standard’ (or ‘Winter’) time, and the higher death rate remains until the clocks are set forward in Spring to ‘daylight saving’ or ‘Summer’ time. The effect has been robustly demonstrated and quantified in studies all over the world, such as this one in Australia <a href="http://bit.ly/NO1xaC" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">http://</span><span class="">bit.ly/NO1xaC</span><span class="invisible"></span></a> .</p><p>Contrary to popular misunderstanding, the increase is not a brief blip of people taking a while to get used to the change, it’s because during the winter (clocks-back) time regime there are more pedestrians and more cars on the roads together in darkness. No matter what the clock says, there are more drivers and more pedestrians coexisting in the afternoon-evening than in the morning, so when more of the afternoon-evening is dark, more pedestrians get killed. Look for a few moments at this plot of pedestrian deaths per month-hour, also from UMTRI, and see for yourself. </p><p>A 2001 study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute ( <a href="http://bit.ly/1kFWRSf" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">http://</span><span class="">bit.ly/1kFWRSf</span><span class="invisible"></span></a> , fig. 1 & table 4 especially) homes in on the direct link between setting the clocks back and killing more pedestrians. UMTRI’s Michael Flannagan, one if the study's authors, says, “There is a lot more pedestrian activity in the evening than in the morning, so shifting all activity earlier relative to the sun [as in summer/clocks-forward time] is a net benefit.” That means keeping Summer/Daylight time year-round would save lives. </p><p>There’s effort toward an end to the biannual deadly clock dance; most U.S. states and many Canadian provinces have introduced or at least considered keeping daylight (Summer) time all year—they’d stop setting the clocks back every Autumn. But while US states can adopt permanent ‘standard’ (Winter) time at will, they can’t have year-round daylight/Summertime without permission from the U.S. Congress, which is still floundering in low-function turbulence and disarray, so there’s not much hope there. Canadian provinces could change right now, but won’t until their adjacent U.S. states make the change.</p><p>Meanwhile, the conversation is annually dominated in the press by those claiming to wield “the science” on the matter. They say wellbeing can be thrown off by daylight time, with people feeling less than their best because their phone clock doesn’t agree with what their circadian clock might say. </p><p>Maybe, but dead pedestrians cannot be asked how chipper they were feeling in their last moments. Too, there are many who don’t care which way the clock is, as long as it stays there and stops changing. They have a point, but they’re not quite all the way there; they certainly should care, because the question has one right answer.</p><p><a href="https://tiggi.es/tags/DaylightSavingTime" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>DaylightSavingTime</span></a> <br><a href="https://tiggi.es/tags/PublicPolicy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PublicPolicy</span></a></p>