Box UK: BBC Innovation Labs Blog

When we first started mining the data, I raised the hypothesis that low, bright sun during the summer may cause an increase in incidents. Now that we have nearly 13,000 incidents recorded, and the past few weeks have been almost consistently sunny, I thought I’d re-examine this idea.

Having re-queried the data, it seems there is no such pattern - no increase in east-bound incidents during the early rush-hour, and no increase in west-bound incidents during the evening rush-hour or later in the evening when the sun is setting.

Of course, the sun may be responsible for other types of incident (increased road rage, increased break-downs due to overheating, etc), but these are unfortunately more difficult to test and prove with the current data!

*** Dan