A new study found that the week after the annual shift back to standard time sees a 16 percent increase in deer-vehicle collisions each year.
On average, around 2.1 million deer-vehicle collisions happen in the U.S. each year. These incidents are responsible for over $10 billion in economic losses as well as 59,000 human injuries and 440 human deaths.
The researchers found that deer-vehicle collisions are 14 times more frequent in the two hours after sunset than before sunset. Animals, of course, stick to their pattern no matter what human clocks say, going about their lives even as traffic patterns shift to an hour “earlier” and causing more driving at dusk. The potential for deer-vehicle interactions is already increased in November because that’s when white-tailed deer (and some other ungulates) have their short breeding season.
