Bradford's statistics for fatal and serious road crashes have got safety experts baffled.
The district bucks the national trend for when most fatal and serious road traffic collisions happen.
In other areas of the UK, they take place on Friday evenings but in Bradford and across the rest of West Yorkshire the time for the worst crashes is Tuesday afternoon between 5pm and 6pm, followed by Wednesday morning between 8am and 9am.
Philip Gwynne, head of public affairs for the West Yorkshire Casualty Reduction Partnership, said: "The national trend of a Friday evening can be more easily explained because people are commuting and rushing on the roads to get home for the weekend.
"But in Bradford the number of accidents in this period is about a third lower than the same period on Tuesdays."
The figures were revealed after detailed examination of fatal and serious road accidents in West Yorkshire between 2002 and 2005.
"Something is happening on our roads on Tuesday afternoons that is leading to the crashes," said Mr Gwynne. The partnership, along with the emergency services, has backed the Telegraph & Argus Be Safe Not Sorry campaign which is urging readers to do their bit to improve road safety in the district and help reduce the number of accidents on our roads. Dozens of readers have already signed our Be Safe Not Sorry pledge.
Now the experts are appealing to T&A readers to help them solve the mystery.
"The trend for Bradford's treacherous Tuesday is puzzling and we have yet to identify a reason for it," said Mr Gwynne.
"We want people to think about their lifestyles and see whether they can come up with any plausible explanations as to why Bradford bucks the trend."
Steve Thornton, Bradford Council's principal highways engineer, said: "We want motorists and pedestrians in Bradford to be our eyes and ears on the roads. We have already looked to factors such as weather, traffic density, vehicle types and road conditions to see if there is any link to explain the crash clusters.
"We have also analysed the ages and genders of the casualties and the journeys they were making but so far we have drawn a blank. All the crashes appear to be entirely random events, which makes the point that crashes can and do happen to anyone, anywhere."
e-mail: jennifer.sugden@bradford.newsquest.co.uk
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