Yesinsurance has released figures showing that UK road deaths could be cut by 6% - around 200 people per year – if the clocks were put forward instead of back in the UK each winter.
The study revealed that using British Summer Time (BST) in summer and BST+1 in winter would notably cut road deaths during shorter winter days. Currently the UK uses BST in summer and GMT in winter.
The insurance company’s figures show that this change could potentially cause a small increase in road accidents and death in the dark morning but would benefit from a decrease in accidents in the current dark afternoons and evenings. Last year we saw 3,172 accidents which could be potentially reduced to 2,989 if this move was taken. Serious injuries would also fall from 28,672 to under 27,000.
Paul Purdy of yesinsurance.co.uk said: “"In 2006, deaths on British roads totalled 522 in the five hours between 6am and 11am, rising to 961 from 3pm to 8pm," said Paul Purdy of yesinsurance.co.uk. Accident statistics show that darkness increases the level of risk on the roads and our own experience of making insurance payments on car accidents mirrors this pattern. Moving clocks forward in winter would help to reduce accidents later in the day, whilst the corresponding increase in accidents earlier in the day would be smaller."
The environment would also benefit from this move, the country would see significant CO2 savings. Most of the UK’s population is asleep during the early hours of the morning, more people are awake during the afternoon and early evening and using power for heating and lighting.
There has been a previous suggestion to put the clocks forward in winter, and there was an experiment between 1968 and 1971, the idea was dropped because of fears that school children would be involved in accidents during the early hours of the morning. However yesinsurance.co.uk argues that currently it is dark when school children are making their way home from school in the depth of winter, and the changes would not mean more accidents involving them.
Another argument against the change was that Scotland would suffer due to its shorter hours of daylight in winter months, however they would be expected to see the same reductions in accidents as the rest of the UK. Purdy said: "The same rules regarding the timing of road accidents apply in Scotland as they do in the rest of the UK. However, it would be perfectly possible for Scotland to operate on a one hour time difference to the rest of the UK in winter, if that was preferred."
The findings of this research was backed up by a similar study issues by Cambridge University engineers, which stated that staying on BST all year round could prevent 104 road deaths and 450 serious injuries, saving the National Health Service £200m each year. Yesinsurance asserts that even greater benefits would be seen from its own proposition for moving to BST+1.
Cambridge University’s study also reinforced yesinsurance’s claims that Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced and millions of pounds could be saved on energy bills from changing the time we run on in winter. They found that darker evenings cause customers to use an extra 5% electricity which generate millions of tons of CO2.
It has often been asserted that Britain would greatly benefit from synchronising clocks with the rest of Europe, people have said they would prefer to have more daylight in the afternoons and evenings in winter than in the morning.
This change could also see a positive effect on insurance policies, if the chances of accidents are reduced then customers could end up paying less for their car or van insurance policies.
