The Independent , Tuesday, 26 October 2004

End this dark age and save children's lives

NICK ROSS

Given the hysteria over false health scares like MMR it is little less than sensational humbug that we deliberately kill roughly 100 children every year. We will all, individually and collectively, contribute to the massacre this weekend. Make no mistake: the fact that we put our clocks back each October is not because of some inescapable force of nature. It is a calculated decision; a political choice made by ministers. And let’s be clear: that choice has appalling consequences – real blood, pain, disfigurements, disabilities and bereavements on a scale that, if it happened in any other context, would scandalise the nation.

Of course for many us changing the clocks twice a year is little more than a minor inconvenience; and though we grumble each Spring because the change robs us of 60-minutes, at this time of year we welcome a luxurious extra hour in bed. But somehow there is an intellectual disconnect between that little domestic chore of re-setting our watches and timers and its terrible consequences, year after year after year. Its huge costs in human life has been researched and accepted in report after official report. Its murderous effect is as sure as if we had led dozens of children up a mountain and offered them to the gods. But this human sacrifice is not to the gods; it is on the altar of unthinking politics.

Politicians are more worried about upsetting the reported objections of a few hundred farmers tending livestock than about the resulting and measurable cull of human young.

It is a real low in the ethics of British public life. Of course there is a down side to having a darker start to the day, mostly that as you go further north you can have eerily and frustratingly long gloomy mornings. Some farmers and construction workers have a legitimate objection. But in the balance of right and wrong can their inconvenience seriously be thought to be worth 100 or more families bereaved each year?

Not all politicians are blasé about these young casualties. There have been attempts by private members to change the hours, most recently this month by Bexleyheath MP Nigel Beard. His arguments were valid and well researched and does not say much for the shallowness of fellow–MPs that the bill failed, and nor was it the finest hour of elements of the Scottish press that, finding a Sassenach to attack, gave Mr Beard a rough ride. Mercifully most Scottish journalists, and many politicians nowadays take a rather more thoughtful approach. Indeed, the Scottish Executive now accepts that changing the clocks would also save Scots' lives, and a survey earlier this year by the safety group RoSPA suggested that, if the public at large knew about the savings, a majority of Scottish voters would support retaining British Summer Time.

The reason that putting back the clocks is so very deadly is that it deprives us of daylight in the afternoons when people, and especially children, are more active and yet less conscientious. For some reason we humans tend to be more cautious in the early mornings. Parents may worry that their youngsters will more often be heading off to school each weekday in the dark, but at least the morning journey tends to be direct, and drivers tend to be more focused. After school it’s often a different story, with motorists less attentive and a host of distractions for kids: friends, shops, and just milling around in the street.

The evidence is not mere theory; we have tried retaining summer time and found it saves a lot of lives. Between 1968 and 1971 Britain experimented with Greenwich Mean Time plus one hour throughout the year. As expected, with darker mornings there was an increase in morning casualties, but the reduction in evening casualties far outweighed it: an overall drop of 2,500 deaths and serious injuries in the first two winters of the experiment.

In 1998 the Transport Research Laboratory took another look at the evidence and concluded we could safely assume there would be 450 fewer deaths and serious injuries each year if we abandoned this bizarre October ritual.

Motorists who have been through an advanced driving course tend to be more aware than most of hazards, but the dangers of darkness in the afternoon are insidious. I have witnessed a schoolboy half-dead in the street and permanently brain-damaged because coming home from school he excitedly stepped off the kerb in front of a passing van. It was an accident, of course, but also a consequence of political decisions.

We abandoned GMT in summer back in 1916, after a builder called William Willett, from Petts Wood in Kent, proposed that “daylight saving” would save money and, above all, improve the nation’s health. If only he had suggested that daylight saving be continued throughout the year. Indeed, suppose we had always been on perpetual British Summer Time, would we now seriously contemplate moving to GMT in winter when all best evidence suggested it would kill 100 people and injure thousands more?

It is no more than complacency, inertia and political cowardice that keeps us where we are. Perhaps The Independent would care to print a list of all those MPs and SMPs who would support abandonment of winter GMT, and list of those who won’t. We can then stick pins in pictures of the latter. Being pictures, they won’t bleed of course. Unlike their constituents. Let this year be the last that we put the clocks back in this way. If not let us hear the name of each MP who would vote to continue this dark-age carnage.

Nick Ross is a council member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists and a BBC presenter. His views do not represent those of the BBC.

© Nick Ross 2004