When the clocks go back in November, pedestrian crashes move into the dark
In the four weeks after the November clock change there were 2,887 pedestrian crashes in the dark, against 2,436 in the four weeks before: 19% more. Crashes in daylight went the other way: 2,969 before, 2,426 after.
The numbers
- 4 weeks before
- 4 weeks after
Walking crashes, 2021–2026 (2026 so far). Found in 2021–2023 (1,751 vs 1,451); held in 2024–2026 (1,136 vs 985).
What it doesn't say
Same number of weeks, a month apart. The evening commute moves into darkness overnight while the people walking stay the same.
The share is within crashes: with no counts of how many people walk, ride or drive where, it can't say how likely a crash is for anyone.
How it was found
A scan of the crash records found it in the earlier years, among thousands of patterns tested with a false-discovery control, and it held in the later years, which the scan never saw. A person then read it and checked it isn't an artefact of how crashes are recorded. The numbers above are recomputed from the data each time the site is rebuilt. All findings and the method
Where to look next
- People hit on foot in the dark with no street lights are killed about four times as often
- A crash with a person on foot on a freeway kills them more than a third of the time
- On roads posted 50 mph or more, a third of pedestrian crashes are fatal
- Even in a crosswalk at an intersection, crashes at night on a lit street are about three times as deadly