Following the introduction of two, two-hour Sunday sessions by a small number of hotels and clubs in Victoria, Australia, there was apparently no increase in casualty traffic accidents. By contrast, after the subsequent introduction of an eight-hour Sunday session from noon to 8 p.m., there was a 32.6% increase during the four hours after the session finished. Both confidence intervals and chi-square tests confirmed this to be a significant increase. The finding is compared and contrasted with previous research on the effect of changing the days and hours of sale of alcoholic beverages.
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