Do the Clocks Going Back Make Britain's Roads Deadlier?

Quick answer: The UK clocks go back to Greenwich Mean Time at 2am on Sunday 25 October 2026 — and the darker evenings that follow are measurably more dangerous. DfT figures show pedestrian deaths in Britain rose from 40 in October 2018 to 70 in December; the RAC Foundation found 278 more injury collisions on average in the two weeks after the autumn clock change. RoSPA is renewing its call to scrap the October change altogether.

When the clocks go back

The rule is simple, says GOV.UK: in the UK the clocks go forward one hour at 1am on the last Sunday in March, and back one hour at 2am on the last Sunday in October. In 2026 that means the clocks go back on Sunday 25 October, and Britain returns to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

The practical effect arrives at rush hour. From Monday 26 October, the evening commute between 5pm and 7pm — when roads are at their busiest — happens in darkness instead of daylight. That sudden shift is what road-safety researchers worry about.

What the official figures show

The Department for Transport's Reported Road Casualties Great Britain 2018 report — table RAS30020, built from STATS19 police reports — gives the clearest month-by-month picture:

• Pedestrians killed: 40 in October 2018, 56 in November, 70 in December (September was 42 — the rise starts exactly when the clocks change)
• The all-road-user casualty rate: 490 per billion vehicle miles in October, rising to 523 in November

An honest caveat: December also brings worse weather, Christmas traffic and the shortest days of the year, so the October-to-December rise is not all down to the clock change. But the pattern repeats year after year, and a study of the two weeks immediately around the change isolates the clock effect itself.

The two weeks around the change

The RAC Foundation analysed six years of police data (2012–2017) and found that in the two weeks after the autumn clock change there were, on average, 278 more personal injury collisions — nearly 20 a day — than in the two weeks before.

The telling detail: three quarters of the extra collisions happened in the afternoons — exactly the hours that the clock change plunges into darkness. Morning rush hour gets lighter, but the data show the darker evenings cost more than the lighter mornings save.

What RoSPA is calling for

RoSPA, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, has renewed its call for an end to the October clock change, arguing Britain should stay on British Summer Time all year round — a call reported in a piece updated on 19 October 2026, quoting chief executive Errol Taylor.

RoSPA's own estimate is that adopting permanent lighter evenings (Single/Double Summer Time) would save around 80 lives and 212 serious injuries a year. That figure comes from RoSPA's research factsheet and is a modelled estimate, not an observed count. Separately, the Department for Transport's own consultation paper, "A Safer Way", concluded that lighter evenings would prevent about 80 road deaths a year — the government's own analysis points the same way.

The pattern is not unique to Britain. A US study (Woods, Weast and Monfort, Journal of Safety Research, February 2025, covering 2010–2019) found fatal crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists rose 13% in the weeks after the autumn time change — and fell 24% after the spring change. The US data is not British data, but it tells the same story: darker evenings, more deaths on foot and on bikes.

Staying safe in the darker evenings

• Drivers: check every light on the car before the clocks change — headlights, brake lights, indicators. Use dipped headlights in poor light, slow down on unlit roads, and take extra care at junctions where pedestrians and cyclists are harder to see.
• Pedestrians and cyclists: be visible. Wear something reflective, use lights on your bike (required by law after dark), and cross where drivers can see you — most of the extra post-clock-change collisions happen in the afternoon gloom.
• Everyone: the 4pm–7pm window is the danger zone. If you can shift a journey out of it, or take extra care within it, the statistics say it matters.

See today's accident reports for what is happening on Britain's roads right now, the UK road accidents page for police-reported collision data for your local area, and the article archive for more data-led road-safety stories.

How these numbers were counted

The monthly pedestrian-death figures come from the Department for Transport's Reported Road Casualties Great Britain 2018 (table RAS30020), compiled from STATS19 police reports of injury collisions. The 278-collision figure comes from the RAC Foundation's 2018 analysis of six years (2012–2017) of police personal-injury-collision data, comparing the two weeks before and after the autumn clock change. The US figures come from IIHS-cited research on fatal crashes in the contiguous United States from 2010 to 2019. RoSPA's 80-lives figure is a modelled estimate from its own research, not a counted total.