Spring Forward at Your Own Risk: Daylight Saving Time and Fatal Vehicle Crashes

Abstract

. Despite mounting evidence that DST fails in its primary goal, some form of Daylight Saving Time is still practiced by over 1.5 billion people globally. In this paper I demonstrate that DST imposes high social costs on Americans, specifically, an increase in fatal automobile crashes. Employing four tests to differentiate between an ambient light or sleep mechanism, I show that this result is most likely due to sleep deprivation caused by the spring transition and the result implies additional costs of DST in terms of lost productivity nationwide.The procedure for DST is well characterized by the phrase "spring-forward, fall-back." Each year on the spring transition date, clocks are moved forward by one hour, from 2 am to 3 am. The process is then reversed for the fall transition with clocks "falling back" from 2 am to 1 am. This alters the relationship between clock time and solar time by an hour, moving sunlight from the morning to the evening (see Figure 1). Although the general concept of DST was first suggested by Benjamin Franklin in a satirical essay in 1784 (Aldridge 1956), it was over a

Circadian Rhythms, Sleep, and Cognitive Skills: Evidence From an Unsleeping Giant

“…A few notable exceptions have analyzed how sleeping duration responds to market incentives (Biddle and Hamermesh, 1990). Empirical studies have examined the effect of daylight saving time on car crashes, work accidents, health, and financial markets (Barnes and Wagner, 2009;Sood and Ghosh, 2007;Monk, 2012;Kamstra et al, 2000;Jin and Ziebarth, 2015;Smith, forthcoming) as well as differences in productivity between different chronotypes, morning vs. evening types (Bonke, 2012). In particular, our paper is closely related to two recent studies analyzing the effects of sleep deprivation on productivity (Gibson and Shrader, 2014) and health (Giuntella and Mazzonna, 2015).…”

DEEP sleep: The impact of sleep on financial risk taking

“…Lack of sleep has been linked to major disasters, including the nuclear accident at Chernobyl and the space shuttle Challenger destruction (Mitler et al, 1988). On a less drastic scale, research finds that losing 1 hr of sleep due to daylight savings causes an increase in pedestrian injuries (Sullivan & Flannagan, 2002), traffic accidents (Coren, 1996;Hicks, Lindseth, & Hawkins, 1983;Monk, 1980), fatal vehicle crashes (Smith, 2016;Varughese & Allen, 2001), workplace injuries (Barnes & Wagner, 2009), and a decrease in an individual's general life satisfaction and mood (Kountouris & Remoundou, 2014). This may occur because sleep deprivation can cause impairments in psychomotor function that is equivalent to those produced by consuming alcohol (Dawson & Reid, 1997).…”

Daylight Saving Time and incidence of myocardial infarction: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design

“…To eliminate persistent day-ofweek effects (it might be the case that AMI incidence is higher on weekends than weekdays, for example), State differences and longterm time trends, we follow Smith (2014) and demean the log of AMI incidence by day-of-week, State and year.…”

“…This sudden disturbance caused by DST to individuals' daily routine has recently been shown to affect outcomes such as fatal vehicle crashes (Smith, 2014), criminal activity (Doleac and Sanders, forthcoming) and individual well-being (Kountouris and Remoundou, 2014) using robust econometric techniques. In the medical literature, Janszky and Ljung (2008) provide one of the first recognized piece of evidence relating DST and the incidence of AMI.…”

“… Doleac and Sanders (forthcoming) andSmith (2014), for example, consider law changes to DST policy in the US to account for endogeneity, since DST occurs simultaneously across 48 states (Arizona and Hawaii do not observe DST) and at approximately the same time each year.…”