And that"s why in this...

And that"s why in this magazine, national newspapers and on radio and TV for the last two decades, I"ve been patiently and passionately spelling out the same message to politicians - and others in power - that the ritual of putting the clocks back at the end of October means putting more road users and pedestrians in hospital beds and coffins.

We can continue arguing about this controversial, life-taking subject as we have done in the past, but if we do that, the death toll will increase further. No doubt we can all give our personal, occasionally ill-informed views on why we think it"s a good or a bad thing that we mess around with the time, and make afternoons darker an hour earlier in autumn. But for once in our self-centred lives, can we just stop looking after number one and consider the bigger picture?

For a variety of reasons, a comparatively small group of Brits - farmers, builders and many of those living in the extreme north - have insisted that a combination of lighter mornings/darker evenings rather than darker mornings/lighter evenings works better for them. Fair enough. But it really is time that this minority stopped imposing its preferences on the vast majority, because by continuing to turn the clocks back we will carry on killing more people on the roads than we would do if the clocks didn"t get changed. As a country, we need to put individual jobs, regions and personal preferences to one side, and face the fact that there is an unnecessary increase in deaths and injuries as a result of us adjusting the time every October.

Surely, the job of the Government is to limit the risks to its citizens. In winter, we face the added and unavoidable natural dangers of wetter, icier and more slippery roads and pavements. But the politicians are knowingly - as they"ve been told often enough - adding to those hazards thanks to their insistence that we bring on the afternoon darkness early. Never mind speed kills. How about some acknowledgement that night-time conditions when kids leave school and play on the streets are a killer?

I fear that our leaders are obsessed with minor speed infringements that rake in millions for them in cynical, hard cash via the fatuous speeding-ticket system - which is mostly about making money and has very little to do with tackling the more serious preventable problems on the road. If the elected and unelected people who think they know what"s best for us really cared, they"d tell us not to change the time on Sunday. But they don"t care, the clocks will go back and the casualty count will rise.