Soccer’s Record on the Road: The Effect of Late-Night Sporting Events on Fatal Car Crashes

Sleep deprivation imposes significant public health and economic burdens. While researchers studying events like daylight saving time have quantified the impacts of population-wide sleep shifts, less is known about the consequences of acute, voluntary, and recreation-driven sleep loss. This paper investigates this gap by studying the 2002 FIFA World Cup, hosted in South Korea and Japan. The extreme time difference meant that US-based fans sacrificed significant sleep to watch live matches. We track fatal car accidents in areas with large German populations on days when the German national team played early morning games. Areas with greater than 30% German heritage experienced increases in fatal car accidents of 35% relative to control areas after German games. The effects are dose-dependent and rise as the share of the German population increases. Our results are larger for crucial tournament games and non-alcohol-related incidents, consistent with sleep-deprived driving. Effects are driven by male drivers, mirroring World Cup viewer demographics. Placebo tests using the 2006 World Cup, where no games were played during normal U.S. sleeping hours, confirm that sleep disruption, not the sporting event itself, drives our findings.