Why the clocks shouldn’t go back go back this weekend

This Sunday Britain will move from British Summer Time and back to Greenwich Meantime. But the facts all point to us being better off NOT moving our clocks back an hour. So why do we do it and who makes the decision?

Well, firstly, here are seven facts:

Errol Taylor, the chief executive of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), said in 2019: “We know that the clock change kills people. During the working week, casualty rates peak at 8am and 10am and 3pm and 7pm, with the afternoon peak being higher. Road casualty rates increase with the arrival of darker evenings and worsening weather conditions. And its vulnerable road users – such as children on their way home from school and cyclists – who would experience the most benefit. Anything we can do to bring these rates down has to be worth it.”

Academics Horne and Reyner have found the same pattern of more accidents in the afternoon in many other countries including the USA, Finland and France.

Harvard’s Francesca Gino and two Danish researchers looked at four years of test results for 2 million Danish school children. They found that the kids who took the tests in the morning scored significantly higher than those who took the tests in the afternoons.?

Dai, Milkman, Hoffman and Staats did a massive study of hand washing at over 30 hospitals in the USA?including over 4000 nurses and care givers with some 14 million ‘hand hygiene opportunities’. Using data from sanitiser dispensers equipped with radio frequency identification, they found that there was 38% less hand washing in the afternoon than in the morning. And that meant there were 7,500 unnecessary infections per year at a cost of $150m over the 34 hospitals in the study.?

Sergio Garbarino and his colleagues at the University of Genoa found that Italian police officers who took naps immediately after their afternoon shifts had 48% fewer traffic accidents than those who didn’t have a sleep.

In Israel three social scientists studied judges making decisions on who got parole from prison and who didn’t. Judges were found to be much more likely to issue a favourable ruling in the morning than the afternoon. The ‘default’ - keep them locked up or keeping their ankle monitor on - went from 35% to nearly 90% as the judges’ ability to study the cases reduced in the afternoon.?

In a study of US Federal courts it was found that on the Mondays after the switch to Daylight Saving Time - when people lose on average 40 minutes of sleep - judges rendered prison sentences that were 5% longer than a typical Monday. Presumably, to make up for the lost time.

So we naturally ‘dip’ in the afternoon because of our natural circadian rhythm.

Unfortunately, the decision to go or stay on BST is with the politicians. And the ‘sitting’ hours of the House of Commons are such that 84% of the time they’re discussing their stuff after mid-day….?