IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eiq/eileqs/150.html

Summertime and the drivin’ is easy? Daylight Saving Time and vehicle accidents

Author

Listed:
  • Ioannis Laliotis
  • Guiseppe Moscelli
  • Vassilis Monastiriotis

Abstract

Although it is commonly understood that light conditions affect driving behaviour, detailed evidence is scarce especially for EU countries. In this paper we use the exogenous variation in daylight caused by Daylight Saving Time (DST) shifts to examine the role of light conditions on vehicle accidents. We use a rich dataset from Greek administrative data covering the universe of all types of recorded vehicle accidents over the period between 01 January 2006 to 32 December 2016. Relying on a regression discontinuity design we attempt to provide a casual evaluation regarding the impact of exogenous time shifts on the number of vehicle crashes. Our results are supportive of an ambient light mechanism that reduces the counts of serious vehicle accidents during the Spring transitions and increases on the count of minor ones during the Fall transition, especially during the most impacted hours within the day. We discuss the implications of our study both for the importance of light ambience conditions for car accidents and for the particular case of the adoption and preservation of DST policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Ioannis Laliotis & Guiseppe Moscelli & Vassilis Monastiriotis, 2019. "Summertime and the drivin’ is easy? Daylight Saving Time and vehicle accidents," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 150, European Institute, LSE.
    • Handle: RePEc:eiq:eileqs:150
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lse.ac.uk/european-institute/Assets/Documents/LEQS-Discussion-Papers/LEQSPaper150.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stefano Castriota & Mirco Tonin, 2023. "Stay or flee? Hit-and-run accidents, darkness and probability of punishment," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 117-144, February.
    2. Gerard Delanty, 2020. "Six political philosophies in search of a virus: Critical perspectives on the coronavirus pandemic," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 156, European Institute, LSE.
    3. Bob Hancke & Toon Van Overbeke & Dustin Voss, 2021. "Similar but different? Comparing economic policy responses to the Corona Crisis in the UK and Germany," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 165, European Institute, LSE.
    4. Depalo, Domenico, 2023. "Should the Daylight Saving Time be abolished? Evidence from work accidents in Italy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    5. Mitchell Orenstein & Bojan Bugaric, 2020. "Populism Amidst Prosperity: Work, Family, Fatherland: The Political Economy of Populism in Central and Eastern Europe," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 163, European Institute, LSE.
    6. Lorenzo Codogno & Paul Noord, 2022. "Assessing Next Generation EU," Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, in: Luigi Paganetto (ed.), Economic Challenges for Europe After the Pandemic, pages 59-82, Springer.
    7. Nower, Michael, 2024. "Losing sleep at the international market: Daylight Saving Time and exchange rates," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 241(C).
    8. Tobias Tesche, 2020. "The European Union's response to the coronavirus emergency: an early assessment," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 157, European Institute, LSE.
    9. Dimitry Kochenov, 2020. "Genuine Purity of Blood: The 2019 Report on Investor Citizenship and Residence in the European Union and its Litigious Progeny," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 164, European Institute, LSE.
    10. Roberto Gillmore, 2025. "Daylight Saving Time and Automobile Accidents: Evidence From Chile," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(5), pages 880-931, May.
    11. Nina Lopez Uroz, 2020. "Populism Amidst Prosperity: Poland's Growth Model and its Socio-Political Outcomes," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 159, European Institute, LSE.
    12. Richard Bronk & Wade Jacoby, 2020. "The epistemics of populism and the politics of uncertainty," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 152, European Institute, LSE.
    13. Hsu, Cheng-Kai & Wang, Bonnie S. & Lo, Hsuan & Chen, Chin-Wei, 2025. "Every Stop Counts: Evaluating the impact of a new penalty amendment for non-yielding drivers on reducing road traffic injuries and deaths in Taiwan," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 1041-1049.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • R41 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Transportation: Demand, Supply, and Congestion; Travel Time; Safety and Accidents; Transportation Noise

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eiq:eileqs:150. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Katjana Gattermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eilseuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.