SEFS Associate Professor, Laura Prugh, pens Guest Essay for New York Times
SEFS Associate Professor, Dr. Laura Prugh, writes that ditching daylight savings, as many are in favor of, would be a mistake.
Prugh writes, “It’s not just that our afternoons and evenings would be shrouded in more darkness, which often comes with higher crime, more vehicle collisions and fewer opportunities to enjoy the outdoors after work or school. There’s another problem with standard time, and it’s gone all but unnoticed until now. Last year, my research team showed that standard time leads to far more vehicles colliding with deer.” We aren’t just talking deer deaths. Human deaths and injuries as well as collision costs are also at stake. “The switch from daylight saving to standard time in autumn causes peak traffic volumes to shift from before sunset to after sunset, leading to a 16% spike in deer-vehicle collisions. By reducing traffic after dark, our model predicts that year-round daylight saving time would prevent 36,550 deer deaths, 33 human deaths, 2,054 human injuries, and US$1.19 billion in collision costs annually.”
