According to Bloomberg.com: Deaths from traffic accidents around April 15,
traditionally the last day to file individual income taxes in the U.S., rose 6
percent on average on each of the last 30 years of tax filing days compared
with a day during the week prior and a week later, according to research
published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Even allowing Americans to file their taxes
electronically hasn’t negated the crash trend, lead researcher Donald
Redelmeier said. The findings suggest stress, lack of sleep, alcohol use and
less tolerance to other drivers on tax deadline day may contribute to an
increase in deaths on the road, Redelmeier said.
“An increase of risk in this magnitude is
about the same as what we observe on Super Bowl Sunday, a time notorious in the
U.S. for drinking and driving,” said Redelmeier, a professor of medicine at the
University of Toronto in Canada, in an April 6 telephone interview.
The research showed that there were 226 fatal
crashes for each of the 30 tax days and 213 fatal accidents for each of the 60
control days.
Stressful
Deadlines
“Our research suggests that stressful
deadlines can contribute to driver error that can contribute to fatal crashes,”
Redelmeier said. “People have, for a long time, speculated that psychological
stress may contribute to real world crashes, but this is the first study to pin
that down.”
The study, which appears as a research letter
in the medical journal, looked at tax deadline data from the Internal Revenue
Service and fatal traffic accident data from the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration from 1980 to 2009. The researchers then used a database
to identify crashes that led to deaths. For every tax day, they also identified
a day one week before and one week after as a comparison.
Redelmeier said drivers who are stressed
should remember to buckle their seat belts, obey the speed limit, avoid
alcohol, minimize distractions and refrain from driving recklessly.
“Under normal circumstances, everyone nods
their heads agreeable,” he said. “Under stressful circumstances, it’s when you
tend to forget these pieces of advice.”
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