3 Ghost Festival Driving Trends Verified

You know what people who are super of stitious say: don’t do anything risky during the Chinese Ghost Festival, because the chance for it to go badly is higher. All sorts of calamities can befall you if you refuse to heed this advice. So no swimming, no taking long trips, no buying big-ticket items like cars, no moving homes, and the list goes on.

The thing is, is there any scientific basis to these 7th month “truthisms”? Of course not, that’s why they are called superstitions. Right?

Luckily statistics can be collected and objectively assessed to ascertain reality. The truth is out there - with that in mind, here’s a few 7th month driving superstitions I put under the scrutiny of stone cold objectivity. Like the following:

Over the years, there has been a downward trend in automobile accidents of any sort. However, what I’m looking for is a smoking gun – just any year with a peak accident rate in the 7th month would prove this superstition has a firm base in reality.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to find breakdowns by month in Singapore, so I looked further afield and found this: Forbes had published a story in 2009 with the title, “Most Dangerous Times To Drive”. And in that story, according to America’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “The most dangerous month, it turns out, is August”.

Now, is it mere coincidence that the 7th lunar month of every year usually falls in August?

Aha! Now this is an easy statistic to check out. We all know from economics classes that the laws of supply and demand apply to the prices of cars. But, remember, sales of new cars in Singapore is pretty price-inelastic, and the main factor influencing volume of sales isn't price - it is the number of COEs that are released by the Land Transport Authority.

So have there been fewer COEs released in August? I dived into the LTA website and found this: a month-by-month breakdown of COEs released in 2014. Guess what? No big increase or decrease in COEs vis-à-vis other months. It wasn’t the highest in the year nor was it the lowest.

I then looked at Type and Number of Vehicles Transferred in 2014, which is a form of statistics shorthand for number of used car sales, and found no discernible pattern in used car sales, either. So people have not been resisting the sale or buying of used cars during the 7th month.

However, acting on a hunch, I looked up the Monthly Age Distribution of Vehicles and found that month on month for the first 7 months of 2015, the number of cars aged below 1 year plots a steady upward growth rate . So there’s little chance of fewer cars sold in August - if anything it'll be higher this month going by the last 6 month trend. Singaporeans sure are rich!

To disprove this, I only needed to discover a single year in which there weren’t more car-related crimes during the 7th Month. Thankfully, that year was close at hand. Because I do not have direct access to police records, I scrutinised their media releases for 2014 instead. Here’s what I found.

During the, which stretches from 27 June to 26 July, there were a total of 9 releases related to automobiles:

26 Jul 17 Motorists Arrested For Drink-Driving

24 Jul Man Arrested For Loanshark Harassment Targeting Motor Vehicles

24 Jul Man Arrested For Series Of Theft From Vehicles

24 Jul Police Arrest Four For Theft Of Motorcycles

22 Jul Two Suspects Arrested For Theft Of Motorised Bicycles At Jurong West Street 93

15 Jul Trio Arrested For Theft Of Motorcycles

11 Jul One Male Suspect Arrested For Series Of Theft from Vehicle

03 Jul Appeal For Information - Theft From Vehicle

27 Jun Taxi Robber Arrested Within 15 Hours

During the from 25th Aug to 23rd Sep, there were only 4 automobile-related events:

10 Sep 16 Motorists Arrested For Drink-Driving

05 Sep Two Men Were Arrested For Loansharking Activities

27 Aug Man Arrested For Theft Of Lorry

25 Aug Hit-And-Run Driver Arrested

Now, how about the which ran from 27th July to 24th August? A total of 6 offenses occurred:

22 Aug Man Arrested For Suspected Theft of Motor Vehicles

21 Aug Appeal for Information – Theft of Bicycle

07 Aug Serial Loanshark Harasser Targeting Vehicles Nabbed

07 Aug Motorcycle Parts Thief Arrested

07 Aug 19 Nabbed For Drink-Driving

03 Aug One Subject Arrested For Series Of Theft From Vehicle

So of the 3 months, the 7th was totally unremarkable in terms of automotive crime. Maybe car criminals were being extra cautious during the 7th month last year.

From the above statistic, it is possible to derive the number of cars stolen. In the 7th month, 3 motorcycles were stolen, in the 8th, 1 lorry, and in the 6th, several were stolen, making the 7th a low-activity month for crime.

However, the General Insurance Association of Singapore (GIA) noted in 2013 that cases of stolen cars spike around October and November. Not August, which is where the 7th month usually falls.

The exception proves the rule, so there you have it! You might not be more statistically likely to become a victim of automobile crime during the 7th month, but there’s at least one report out there recommending you be extra careful while you’re on the road.

At least while you're in America, anyway!

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