A little over a week ago, Spacing Toronto picked up on a story out of Pittsburgh about how changing the clocks in the fall make us all a little screwy:

“The change that’s going to occur on Sunday is going to have some pronounced effects on your risks of walking between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.,” Dr. Gerard said last night. “Basically, these are the hours when it’s just getting dark. Next week at this time, it will be pitch black. But people walking and people driving won’t have adjusted. The baseline risk for getting killed is almost tripled.”

Their study of pedestrian fatalities from 1999-2005 shows that there is an average of 37 more U.S. pedestrian deaths around 6 p.m. in November compared to October. That amounts to an increase of 186 percent.

It sounds like there isn't enough research on why everyone is a bit "off" at this time of year, but a quick Google search brings up articles like "Daylight Savings Time Disrupts Human's Natural Circadium Rhythm":

As in other animals, the human circadian clock uses daylight to stay in synchrony with its environment as the seasons change. In fact, Roenneberg said, this "entrainment" is so exact that human behavior adjusts to the east-west progression of dawn within a given time zone.

In every day language, I take this to mean that our brains go a bit awry in the first couple of weeks after the fall time change because our natural clocks expect it to be light when it's dark. Until our clocks sync up with the new time, our brains have difficulty dealing with the early darkness and it makes driving, walking and cycling more dangerous.

Personally, this is the hardest time of year to bike around the city.

I do fine in the winter (as long as I wear extra layers), but early November is the worst. My mind is adapting to the early darkness as I bike home and I have to deal with drivers whose own minds are adapting to the darkness... and who seem to pass me too closely or turn in front of me with more frequency.

Even though I bike to and from work using a set route (as I recommend in my 8 Secrets to Cycling in Traffic to get use to traffic flow and driver behaviour at all parts of a route), I get a little freaked out every November by cars, reminding me of how I felt when I first started biking to work - not used to having cars right beside me and unsure of what they were going to do.

I can now attribute this to the time change and not a driver-wide conspiracy of aiming for cyclists and pedestrians.

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