Crash and burn times revealed

Crashes most likely at 4pm; fires at midnight

Fires are most likely to break out in Devon homes between midnight and one in the morning.

You're most likely to have a car crash between four and five in the afternoon.

Devon and Somerset Fire Service have released the statistics, as part of a presentation to councillors this week.

But if you think your home is a greater fire risk not long after the household's gone to bed, that's not quite right. The second biggest hour for fires is between five and six in the evening, followed by eight till nine - when people are cooking or turning on fires. 

When it comes to driving, the morning rush hour is less of a risk than the evening one. And the proportion of crashes than need the fire service to help jumps at 11 in the morning and stays high till 7 at night.

Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue use the information to help their planning. Assistant Chief Fire Officer Peter Bond says: “The risk of RTCs is higher in the daylight hours and the risk of fires are lower in the early hours and the daytime, and the evening time is more risk as people come home and cook or turn on fires. These are key bits of evidence to determine how we crew our appliances and the resources we send.

“People’s lifestyles are different and it is a variable graph and they do things at different times of the day. When they are asleep, they don’t discover a fire. The risk rises generally when people start to go to bed or into different areas of the house and discover things they didn’t know about.

“These maps give us the evidence that we need to map the risk. Our strategic priorities include ensuring that the service identifies and addresses all risks in the community, with more resources to be located where risk is greatest.”