Annual traffic accidents can be reduced by about 1.1 percent if Japan adopts daylight-saving time, according to projections released Monday by the Japan Productivity Center for Socioeconomic Development.
The center said the economic effect of turning the hands of the clock ahead an hour between April and October would be worth some 46 billion yen a year.
In recent years, the annual number of traffic accidents has hovered around 940,000, and police say statistics show they usually occur around dusk.
Center officials said calculations based on the percentage of accidents vis-a-vis traffic volume by time and season of occurrence show that about 10,000 accidents can be avoided by shifting to daylight-saving time.
It also said that under a daylight-saving regime, 10 percent fewer women would have their purses snatched on their way home from work and 4 percent fewer would be similarly victimized while shopping in the early evening.
The center projected that the move could also save some 930,000 kiloliters of crude oil every year, equivalent to the entire population turning off their TVs for 66 days.
Japan had daylight-saving time for four years starting in 1948 during the Allied Occupation.