Does Daylight Savings Time Affect Traffic Accidents?
Abstract
This paper studies the effect of changes in accident pattern due to Daylight Savings Time (DST). The extension of the DST in 2007 provides a natural experiment to determine whether the number of traffic accidents is affected by shifts in hours of daylight using the year as control group. Using data on traffic accidents in Texas based on crash reports provided by the Texas Transportation Institute, and a difference in differences technique, this study creates a regression model to determine how significant this factor is in affecting traffic accident patterns as observed in the data. Results show that DST has no statistically significant effect on traffic accidents of all categories including (but not limited to) highway, non-highway, and accidents, accidents with injuries and no injuries, and accidents by drivers of all age-groups. This implies that the federal government’s policy of DST (and its extension) has no costs incurred by a rise in motor vehicle crashes when it gets dark early.
Citation
Deen, Sophia 1988- (2012). Does Daylight Savings Time Affect Traffic Accidents?. Honors and Undergraduate Research. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /148812.