RAY: This puzzler is from the Wonderful World of Statistics. A graduate student worked at one of the institutions of higher learning in Our Fair City, and wrote his dissertation on the relationship between uncontrollable outside forces and automobile accidents.

He collected thousands and thousands of accident reports from the State of Massachusetts and correlated the time of the accident with other factors, like temperature, road conditions, automobile size, age of the driver, alcohol usage, speed limits, and whether the accident victim was listening to Car Talk.

After thousands of hours of data input and hours of computer grinding, he discovered an amazing statistic. He found the absolute safest time of year to drive an automobile on a public highway.

It was so safe, in fact, that not one single accident had occurred.

However, still not able to believe his own conclusions, he returned to collecting more accident reports -- this time nationwide. Nationwide, he found that there had been statistically less than 2% of the number of accidents in any other time frame.

The question is: when was the safest time of the year to drive on a public highway and why?

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]