When Fatal Crashes Happen in Orlando: Months and Hours

What the data shows

The night is where the deaths are, all year. The 8 PM hour alone recorded 83 fatal crashes. The five hours from 7 PM to midnight recorded 357, or 34% of the total. The seven daytime hours from 9 AM to 4 PM recorded 180between them.

The cooler months run higher than summer. Per day, fatal crashes ran about 28% higher from November through February than from May through August. The difference is sharper for pedestrian-involved crashes: 135 in the four winter months against 80 in the four summer months. That is a difference in counts, not an explanation. FARS does not record why more crashes happen in a given month, and things that change with the seasons, such as traffic volume, weather and hours of darkness, are not measured here.

The pattern is not a clean “darker months” story. April recorded as many fatal crashes as December and February (101 each), and August, among the longest-daylight months, recorded the fewest (63). Any claim that darkness alone drives the monthly numbers goes further than this data can.

After the clocks fall back

Daylight saving time ends on Sunday, November 1, 2026. Overnight, the 5 PM and 6 PM hours move from daylight toward dusk and dark for the evening commute. Across 2019–2024, those two hours recorded 22 fatal crashes in November and December combined, against 8 in September and October. The two periods have the same number of days.

Read that with care. It is 30 crashes in total over six years, and the whole year's count for those two hours is only 87. A small sample can swing on a handful of crashes, and the timing lines up with the clock change without proving the clock change caused it. Treat it as a reason for care in the evening commute, not as a measured risk.

What about Halloween?

Halloween is a regular subject of pedestrian-safety warnings. In Orange County's fatal-crash records, October 31 had 4 fatal crashes across 6 years (2 of them pedestrian-involved). At the county's average of 0.48 fatal crashes a day, about 3 would be expected on any single calendar date over the same 6 years.

That is far too few crashes to rank Halloween against other nights in Orange County, in either direction. We are not going to claim a local Halloween spike the data does not show. The real pattern in this county is broader: every evening, and especially in the cooler months, is when fatal crashes concentrate.