Accidents skyrocket between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. in the weeks following the fall time change, reveal recent data from the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ). Pedestrians particularly bear the brunt.
Published at 5:00 a.m.
While the Legault government is consulting on the possibility of ending the time change, the SAAQ compared the number of accidents occurring in the 30 days before and after the time changes. And the results are striking.
From 2019 to 2023, between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m., the number of injury accidents jumped by 25% in the fall. Over an entire day, the variation is slighter, but remains up, at 4%.
Due to the autumn time change, darkness arrives significantly earlier. On November 2, the sun set at 5:39 p.m. The next day, it set at 4:38 p.m.
In spring, when the province advances the time and extends the level of sunshine, the situation is completely different. The reductions in collisions range between 24% and 27% depending on the time of day.
Pedestrians pay the price
Pedestrians experience the impact of the time change the hardest, reveal SAAQ data. For people traveling on foot, the increase in the number of accidents reaches 78% when returning home in the fall.
Conversely, in spring, accidents involving pedestrians are 45% fewer during the end-of-day rush hour.
Year after year, with nearly 450 collisions, the month of November, in the middle of autumn, is the most accident-prone. In the spring, the month of March is the least busy in this regard, with barely 200 accidents causing bodily injury recorded.
These data concerning the over-representation of pedestrians in accidents following the fall time change have, once again, become reality this fall. At the beginning of November, a truck driver struck and killed an 11-year-old child in the Mile End neighborhood of Montreal. The accident had relaunched the debate on the time change.
PHOTO SARAH MONGEAU-BIRKETT, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
An 11-year-old boy died after being hit by a truck at the corner of Bernard and Du Parc avenues on November 4.
“I notice that it happened a day after the time change, even though it got dark earlier,” declared the advisor associated with active transportation, Marianne Giguère. When driving a motor vehicle, you must be extra careful because you have a potentially deadly weapon in your hands. »
Raising awareness
In light of these statistics, the SAAQ believes that awareness efforts must continue, especially in the fall, “regarding the importance of being more vigilant on the road at this time of year “.
“We did this during our call for caution at the dawn of Pedestrian Month (October) and we will continue our awareness-raising actions regarding fatigue while driving and sharing the road,” assures the spokesperson for the organization, Geneviève Perron.
At the end of October, the Minister of Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette, announced the holding of a public consultation, in the form of a web questionnaire, to determine the possibility of abolishing the time change.
This measure, originally adopted to save energy and increase productivity during the First World War, was adopted in Quebec in the 1940s. However, it is increasingly being called into question. In the West, Saskatchewan has not moved the dials forward since 1966.
“The time change can contribute to a lack of concentration at school, an appetite disorder, more irritability and drowsiness at inappropriate times of the day,” indicated Mr. Jolin -Barrette, adding that certain studies “denote an increase in heart attacks, suicides and accidents”.
For the general director of Piétons Québec, Sandrine Cabana-Degani, “it is clear that darkness, coupled with the time it takes to get home, is really dangerous for vulnerable users.”
“Fall is always a time when traffic is heavy,” she explains. At the end of the day, people leave the office, school and public transport. They are on foot, it is dark, so if urban lighting is not adequate, they are much more exposed to risks. We see it every year in the figures. »
What to do in the meantime?
In addition to a potential regulatory change, we must above all review the way we design our streets, says Mme Cabana-Degani. “Too often, our urban lighting is very oriented towards the street, and not on pedestrian corridors. Sometimes just small adjustments can have a big effect on safety,” she notes.
His group applauds the arrival of innovative technologies, such as the two new intelligent crossings that light up automatically when a pedestrian passes, which have just seen the light of day near school zones in Candiac, on the South Shore. A first in America, the initiative is intended to be a way of raising awareness among motorists and thus reducing the risk of accidents.
“Of course there would be advantages to not changing the time, but afterwards, if we just operated in summer time, in the morning, when the children went to school, it would be dark anyway. Regardless, there is work to be done to fundamentally change our arrangements,” continues M.me Cabana-Degani.
She suggests, for example, better lighting municipal parks and urban trails. “When it’s dark in public spaces, we don’t always feel safe. And that’s precisely where we go to walk in the street, under the street lights,” she says.
