Does fasting in Ramadan increase the risk of traffic accidents? A time series analysis

Ramadan in the Muslim world has its rituals and customs which can cause more traffic at certain times of the day. Getting stuck in traffic for hours near Iftar decreases blood sugar and can lead to stress, anger, ignoring driving rules and finally traffic accidents.

This is a descriptive, analytical, and retrospective study on the data of traffic accidents leading to vehicle damage in addition to occupant injury, and death in Guilan, which was conducted from 2013 to 2016. The data were obtained from two databases of Iran Road Maintenance and Transportation Organization and Meteorological Organization in Guilan province. The trends of traffic accidents before and after Ramadan were compared in three different years using time series (TS) analysis. All analyses were performed with STATA SE v13.1 software. P-value less than 0.05 was considered significant.

The average daily traffic accidents (p-value = 0.040) and injuries (p-value = 0.001). increased significantly in the month of Ramadan. The amount of traffic increased significantly. Daily accidents had a significant relationship with the variables of traffic (p-value = 0.000), rainfall (p-value = 0.000), Ramadan month (p-value = 0.000), and holidays (p-value = 0.000). Daily injuries was significantly associated with the variables of traffic (p-value = 0.000), rainfall (p-value = 0.000), Ramadan month (p-value = 0.000), and holidays (p-value = 0.000). IRR showed that if you consider rainfall, holiday, and traffic, as constant variables then the number of traffic accidents and injuries in Ramadan was higher than that of other months.

The responsible organizations in Muslim country are expected to inform the people about increase in traffic accidents and related injuries during Ramadan. Institutions responsible for traffic safety in developing countries like Iran should educate the society to be more attentive about driving behavior in this month. More comprehensive monitoring of traffic and speed control should be performed. Traffic penalties can be a good solution for wrongful drivers to help reduce traffic incidents and injuries.