Assessment of the number of admissions for road traffic collisions and severity of injury in daylight saving time and permanent daylight saving time periods

Abstract

Daylight saving time (DST) is a period between spring and fall when clocks in most parts of the United States are set one hour ahead of standard time. 1 The DST starts on the last Sunday of March and ends on the last Sunday of October. The start and end dates are set as per the by-laws. 2,3 However, it has been implemented permanent in Turkey since 2016. Changes in DST can cause circadian rhythm disturbance and may have harmful effects on our health. Transition into and out of DST affects the social and environmental scheduling twice a year. Even a small change in the timeline can cause significant stress for the body. 4 Moreover, circadian rhythm disturbance caused by sleep delay can lead to various afflictions such as sleep quality disturbance, insomnia, fatigue, headache and attention-deficit disorder. Previous studies have demonstrated that this change in the timeline leads to disturbance of sleep and a breakdown of the circadian rhythm. Thus, such effects of changes in DST may increase the number of road traffic collisions that may occur during the days following the transition date. 3-5

The controversy over daylight saving time: evidence for and against

“…These findings have been recapitulated using driving simulators in a laboratory setting with participants just before and after the spring DST transition [20]. However, many recent studies have not replicated these findings [21][22][23][24]. Turkey implemented pDST in 2016.…”

“…Turkey implemented pDST in 2016. An analysis looking at traffic accidents in the weeks around the dates of the time changes in the years with and without time changes found no significant differences in number of crashes [23]. However, only a couple years were examined and traffic accidents were quite rare (710 patients in the timeframe).…”