In the week after the autumn clock change, there are more deer accidents in the US.
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In the US, moving to daylight saving time permanently could save over one billion dollars a year.
More than a million crashes between deer and vehicles were analysed by Calum Cunningham and his colleagues at the University of Washington. There are an estimated 2.1 million accidents in the US each year, which kill about 450 people and cause $10 billion in damage.
The team found that the change from daylight saving time to standard time in November caused a sudden increase in the amount of driving. The peak traffic volume moved from before sunset in October to after sunset in November. In the week after the autumn clock change, there was a 16 per cent increase in the number of deer and cars colliding.
The animals haven't changed their behavior. Cunningham says there is more traffic on the roads during vulnerable times. sunset comes forward an hour due to the change in time system. If clocks stayed on daylight saving time, there would be more traffic at night than if they changed.
The team says that in a period of two weeks around the autumn clock change, almost 10 per cent of deer accidents occur, which is 2.5 times greater than would be seen if there were no accidents. The breeding season is when the animals are more active.
Deer are the largest species of animals that are hit by cars in the US and they cause enough damage to be reported to insurance companies. Cunningham believes that the ecological benefit of scrapping time changes, which are observed in much of North America and Europe, could be huge.
Cunningham says there could be negative social factors that would make a policy decision difficult. He says it would take a very nuanced cost-benefit analysis of all of the different ways in which time zones can affect society. Both of them will have benefits and both of them will have costs.
The current biology journal has a reference.
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