Star sign predicts traffic accident likelihood.

This is nuts, but since you are asking for an out-of-the-left-field speculation - how about the cortisol levels in mothers - as they change seasonally - affecting the brains of fetuses during some critical developmental period?

I was thinking that certain types of risk taking people have kids during certain types of year..which get raised or genetically are risk takers.. haha..
I think I like yours better though :)

Okay, since, coturnix gets to play left field, then I get to play right field, and throw this out...

I think it is related to when a student is allowed to start school. In my school district for example, the cut-off date for starting school is Sept 30. Anyone born after this date is forced to wait an extra year before entering grade school, regardless of mental and physical abilities.

Therefore, the oldest kids, in all grade school clases, are the kids born in October. Thus they are older, generally more socialized, are generally bigger in stature, and have a year more experience at life, than do the kids born before them.

This might encourage them to be less likely to behave with 'governors", hence, more likeley to take risks, and when older, this could be exhibited by more fluid driving behaviors, including speeding.

The other thought I have about this, is that it's just more evidence for the old Bell Curve. In any grouping, there will be those that are "highest" on the scale, and those that will be rated the "lowest" on the scale, and the stat is realy just a piece of data that is meaningless in any other context.

I would be interested in hearing what others' thoughts are about this, cuz, call me crazy, but somehow, I just can't attribute it to the stars.

ohhhhh ok. the soccer player hypothesis. ;)

Somebody should dig up similar data from Australia to see if the effect is global, or hemispherical.

A new driver will start forming driving habits -- good and bad -- right at the outset. Since a junior license is issued near one's birth date, we know from the DOB when the early experience was gained.

Maybe the school year, and especially winter weather, is a bad time to begin driving.

(I am summer born, have been driving 40 years, no accidents, and the one ticket I got was fraudulent (so said 4 Pennsylvania state troopers)).

I'm a Sagittarius and have had a drivers license for twenty six years. So far I've had:

One accident - was t-boned by a drunk driver.

One speeding ticket written for 80MPH in a 65MPH zone but in reality I was doing over 100MPH.

One moving violation - ran a stoplight in Boston.

So three incidents in twenty six years, on average I have an incident every 8.6 years.

Maybe it's because they turn 16 just before winter, so they start driving at a time when the weather is the most conducive to accidents.

Astrological statistics have tripped up many an unwary person. There are likely to be two confounding statistics here. First, signs don't change at midnight, so there's going to be some fuzz going from one sign to the next. I doubt if this would skew the statistics, but it's going to make the results less significant that they appear on the surface.

Second, and far more significant, the signs are not all the same length. The winter signs are shorter, the summer signs are longer. This is due to the earth's orbit not being quite circular: it's actually an ellipse, and it's moving faster in the Northern Hemisphere winter.

A third significant effect is that the birth rate is not level throughout the year. I know that lots of highly significant astrological correlations vanish into the mist when they're corrected against the California driver's license birth date files. In this case, it's more complex because they vary differently in different regions. Why? I presume God knows.

John Roth

Apparently, there is a whole book on the subject. Here is the table of contents.

How come stories like this in the popular press almost never cite an actual article that the interested reader could look up? I tried looking up Keyvan Mohajer at Stanford, and the person is an EE grad student, with nothing on his web page relating to this. Also, it said the driving stats came from an online insurance site, so the stats are likely skewed by the type of driver who made it into the dataset. Finally, the results are only reported categorically; there are no raw numbers or percents or significance values or anything, so it's hard to know what the actual study might really be saying. Aside from the fact that the astrological sign aspect is crap, I'd be pretty suspicious of the whole story.

I'm thinking along the same lines as Kurt. Where are the actual numbers used for this study? Is there any statistical relevance to one sign over another? After all, it takes just one more crash by a Libra driver than any other driver to make Libras "the worst".

I'm with you guys - I think this whole thing is a load of crap ;)

I dont think so, I think it has to do with when someone learns to drive. I am in a High school with over 1,000 students. We did a study and on something very closely related to this and our results showed that 3% of students that recieved their temps from September-February have not ever caused a crash. When 68% of the students who recieved their temps in March-April have caused a crash. SO I DO BELIEVE THAT A PERSONS BIRTH MONTH MAY EFFECT THEIR CHANCES OF BEING IN AN ACCIDENT. Exspecailly becuase learning to be causous in winter or less causous in summer can make a lot of difference!

I agree with the Liz person, i dont think it is about their astrological sign but when they learned to drive. But was Liz`s school study only on the students who recieved their temps at the appropriate/same age?