Patterns: More Sleep, Fewer Student Car Accidents
The New York Times
Published: Dec 23, 2008
When school officials in Lexington, Ky., decided to push back the start of middle school and high school by an hour, two things happened: the students reported getting more sleep, and traffic accidents involving teenagers went down.
The findings, reported in the December issue of The Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, suggest that allowing students to get more sleep may have broader health effects. The study was conducted by Fred Danner and Dr. Barbara Phillips of the University of Kentucky.
The research does not establish conclusively that the change in school starting times led to the improvement in accident rates. But the study found a significant drop in accidents in Fayette County, where Lexington is located.
In April 1998, researchers surveyed almost 10,000 Lexington middle and high school students about their sleep habits. The survey was repeated a year later, when the starting times were moved to 8:30 for high school and 9 for middle school.
From one year to the next, the percentage of students who reported getting at least eight hours of sleep increased to 50 percent from 38 percent.
And in the two years after the school hours change, the average crash rates for 17- and 19-year-old drivers in the county went down 16 percent. In the rest of the state, they increased almost 8 percent.
© The New York Times. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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