Stop Using the Daylight Savings Time

by pbkhrv • 10 years ago

301 153 10 years ago

wlesieutre2• 10 years ago

Maybe it's just me, but the way these statistics are worded is setting off my skepticism alarms:

Between 1986 and 1995, fatal traffic accidents rose 17% the Monday following the switch to Daylight Saving Time.

Accidents rose 17% that Monday? Does it mean 17% more than any other day, or just that the raw number for that Monday is 17% higher than it used to be? Because they worded it like the latter.

For all this page says, accidents were up 17% every day of the year over that decade.

EDIT: Wikipedia says total US traffic deaths were lower in 1995 than 1986, so I'll chalk this up as poor wording. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...

terinjokes• 10 years ago

I was expecting this number to be followed by "compared to the previous Monday" each time it was used. But, alas, it was not.

wlesieutre2• 10 years ago

The paper is actually linked, so I went ahead and skimmed this one.

From the abstract:

Both models reveal a short-run increase in fatal crashes following the spring transition and no aggregate impact in the fall. Employing three tests, I decompose the aggregate effect into ambient light and sleep mechanisms. I find that shifting ambient light reallocates fatalities within a day, while sleep deprivation caused by the spring transition increases risk. The increased risk persists for the first six days of DST, causing a total of 302 deaths at a social cost of $2.75 billion over the 10-year sample period, underscoring the huge costs of even minor disruptions to sleep schedules.

I still have no idea where the 17% came from or what it's relative to. If anyone else finds it, please fill us in. Am I missing something, or did they borrow a made up statistic out of a clickbait image macro and link to a vaguely related paper as cover or something?

stormbrew• 10 years ago

Not sure about the 17% in 1986-1995 thing, but here's a study of Colorado when it changed DST policy (I assume the date was changed) that found some effect: http://www.colorado.edu/economics/papers/WPs-14/wp14-05/wp14...

ghaff4• 10 years ago

I'm not sure where the 17% is coming from either. The linked study talks about 300 deaths over a 10 year period. That's 30/year which, relative to the 30K or so automotive fatalities in the US per year is 0.01%--i.e. a almost vanishingly small percentage. It's actually not implausible to me that there would be some tiny effect associated with switching time/schedules even if it were only because of "OMG, I forgot to switch my clock and now I'm late for a meeting!" [EDIT: If you apply the 30 annual number against weekly fatalities you can get up into the few percent range. But you're really in the noise with these kind of numbers.]

nv-vn2• 10 years ago

A 2014 study showed that the hour of sleep lost when switching to DST can increase your risk of a heart attack by 25%

I highly doubt that one less hour of sleep on one day of the year can affect that risk by so much. If that were the case, I assume the risk of heart attack would be much higher than it is now.

caf3• 10 years ago

It's 25% higher on that day. For all that statistic tells you though, it might just be bringing forward a heart attack you would otherwise have had the following week.

mjs7231• 10 years ago

A 25% increase of a really low number is also a really low number, and quite frankly these numbers are low enough that it's all probably within a margin of error.

driverdan• 10 years ago

It's also assuming that people get up an hour earlier. I'm sure a lot of people don't set alarms on Sunday and get a full night's sleep.

caf3• 10 years ago

It's like a case study in cherry-picking statistics.

cromulent4• 10 years ago

Exactly. Here's one I cherry-picked showing the opposite:

http://www.degruyter.com/dg/viewarticle/j$002fbejeap.2007.7....

tempodox• 10 years ago

Never trust a statistic you haven't cherry-picked yourself.

shmerl• 10 years ago

I agree, DST causes more problems than any benefits from it.

simendsjo• 10 years ago

I guess you don't live far up north. All wake hours in total darkness is quite depressing.

wtbob3• 10 years ago

You do realise that DST doesn't actually add any daylight to the day, and that if you get far enough north it'll be dark in the morning even an hour later than usual, right? In fact, if you get far enough north the sun won't rise at all in the winter…

bgentry• 10 years ago

That's "Saving" time, not "Savings" time.

rusanu• 10 years ago

Article is correct, only the HN title has the s

blandco• 10 years ago

I'm not sure which is worse. DST itself, or the fact that the use of "savings" is so pervasive.

enraged_camel• 10 years ago

This whole conversation got me thinking... Why not abolish time zones altogether and have the entire US be on the same time zone?

dboyd• 10 years ago

It would screw up high-noon for a lot of people. However, getting the US down to two time zones would be much less problematic, and achieve most of the benefits you'd see from one time zone...

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/daylight...

CiaranMcNulty• 10 years ago

Is 'high noon' that important that it needs preserving?

chillaxtian6• 10 years ago

great article i have seen linked here before: http://qntm.org/abolish

mitchtbaum• 10 years ago

I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. What time is it there?
Google tells me it is currently 4:25am there.
It's probably best not to call right now.

Probably? He's your uncle..

When does he sleep? How regular does he keep that schedule? These mostly seem like factors relating to his health, lifestyle, and where he lives in relation to his local star. Coordination takes more skill than asking someone for "the time" somewhere.

Also, what do you want to tell him? Can it wait? If it seems urgent, then it might make sense to switch on that plastic thing and wake him up. Better yet, he might figure you'd call and switch off his plastic thing before his foggy eyed nephew could interrupt him, whatever he's doing, whenever he's doing it. :)

j/k, I bet he'd love to hear from you. I hope you guys can find a reliable, regularly overlapping, mutually wakeful part of your days in which to keep in touch. You can likely make it a lot easier by replacing that old way of doing it.

donatj• 10 years ago

I've always been curious where the federal government gets the power to define what time it is? If we simply ignored it would there be fines, or does it not have teeth?

gwright• 10 years ago

Educated guess: Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution regarding standards for 'weights and measures'.

caf3• 10 years ago

You are, of course, free to set your watch to whatever time you like. But if you do that, you can't expect anyone else to agree with your view of the current time.

yes_or_gnome• 10 years ago

It's the switch that everyone hates. Instead of ending DST, can we agree to stop using Standard Time?

chillaxtian6• 10 years ago

amen

mws• 10 years ago

yes please!

tempestn2• 10 years ago

Agreed! I'd rather have sun in the evening when I can enjoy it than when I'm sleeping or working. DST year round would be fantastic.

zanny4• 10 years ago

That is blaming a symptom for a problem. The fact people "expect" the sun to rise between 4-6am and go down between 6-9pm is just a product of a broken timekeeping system from two hundred years ago.

"Time" is not a thing that cares what side of the planet you are on, and it makes international scheduling and communication literally hell when you have to calculate time zones.

If we are going to fix time, we should switch everyone to UTC time. If you want to go to work in the dark and leave when the sun rises, have your company schedule hours accordingly. Changing DST now doesn't change that, your business is still setting hours arbitrarilly based around an archaic model of "wake up at 7 work 9-5 go to bed at 11" no matter where you are on the planet. It just makes no sense, and is simply culturally normative so people expect it and structure their internal model of time around it.

frik• 10 years ago

Yes, this.

_kyran• 10 years ago

While you're at it, I'd be happy to even bump it forward another hour!

usrusr• 10 years ago

Not everyone hates it. At my latitude, winter mornings at the summer offset would be terribly depressing and summer evenings would lose much of their appeal without it.

Also I actually enjoy having the yearly ebb and flow of daylight getting spiced up with some predictable discontinuity, but I see how this is a personal preference: It gives me a clear marker for when to stop bothering with the little remaining after work daylight which is less frustrating than being torn on the threshold for weeks.

im3w1l• 10 years ago

I see what you are saying but I think it would be better we instead moved the clocks the other way, and by two hours. That way we could all enjoy lazy mornings and more easily pull off late night coding sessions.

twoodfin• 10 years ago

Agree. Or just rejigger North America's time zones generally.

There is no reason why Bostonians should have to tolerate 4:15 sunsets. The most frequent modern objection I hear is that children will have to go to school in the dark, but school schedules aren't orbital mechanics: Shift those around instead.

ghaff4• 10 years ago

Much as I'd prefer year-round DST in general (as we once had), I have enough flexibility these days that it really doesn't matter that much. At one level I wouldn't be opposed to moving New England to Atlantic Time where it "belongs." But, if I'm being honest, I have to admit that it's probably not worth putting Boston in a separate timezone from New York and the rest of the East Coast (and creating a 4 hour difference from California).

tossaway1• 10 years ago

I don't think shifting school schedules is as easy as you'd think. The start times in my town (and I assume most) are structured to enable working parents to get to work around 9 (depending on their commute) after getting their kids off to school.

Pushing school times back an hour would be a big disruption for a large percentage of the population.

transfire2• 10 years ago

How about we split the difference and be done with it. Spring forward 30 mins and leave it.

legulere2• 10 years ago

As a European that's living further up north than most Americans: Sorry, but no!

I don't want to get up totally in the night in the winter. And in summer I want to be able to use the long evenings with the sun still up instead of getting up too early.

Except one, the cited effects are all about the switch from winter time to summer time.

gaur4• 10 years ago

I don't want to get up totally in the night in the winter.

Since DST is not in effect during the winter, it's hard to see how this proposal will help or hurt you here.

DrJokepu• 10 years ago

Presumably because if the practice of DST ended, there would be an option to either make what previously was known as "standard" or "winter" time permanent again, or switch to "summer time" for good. The person you were replying to was discussing the drawbacks of each of these options.

BillinghamJ2• 10 years ago

You could just adapt the time you do things to suit the time of year...

imron2• 10 years ago

If you live alone and only do things by yourself, then sure.

scrollaway• 10 years ago

If you're far north enough (which you would be, if you are "further north than most americans"), DST won't help. Sunrise in winter morning is several hours off. The entire day is distorted. Shifting things one hour is useless.

legulere2• 10 years ago

Europe lies relatively far north: http://www.astro-tom.com/images/latitudes.gif

DST will help: Lastest sunrise in Munich is 8:04 in winter, earliest in summer is 5:13. That would be 4:13 without DST.

unfamiliar• 10 years ago

You realise that the sun isn't dictated by what time we say it is? If you don't think its reasonable to go to work at 8 during the winter then we should change what time work starts at.

chmike• 10 years ago

From a computer scientist perspective, I would love that we drop DST. But from the social perspective, this would simply shift the problem.

You apparently consider the problem only from the student or employee point of view. What about shops or public office opening hours ? This would imply changing opening hours. See the problem?

manigandham4• 10 years ago

All these articles seem to keep gloss over the actual issue: the switch between standard time and DST twice a year.

People are fine with the time system, especially since timezones themselves are somewhat arbitrary in their regions. DST is actually more comfortable to live with by allowing for more daylight after work hours. It would be better to just switch to DST permanently and avoid the constant frustrating changes.

gaur4• 10 years ago

DST is actually more comfortable to live with by allowing for more daylight after work hours. It would be better to just switch to DST permanently and avoid the constant frustrating changes.

Is adding a permanent 1-hour offset to all of our clocks really a more sensible solution than convincing employers to shift their schedules one hour earlier?

It just sounds kind of Kafkaesque... your boss has set your schedule too late in the day, so your solution is to trick him by winding all his clocks forward by one hour.

chillaxtian6• 10 years ago

the offset from UTC is arbitrary anyways. it is no more arbitrary to keep it at UTC-7 instead of UTC-8.

jasode• 10 years ago

Is adding a permanent 1-hour offset to all of our clocks really a more sensible solution than convincing employers to shift their schedules one hour earlier?

I think you're analyzing it from the perspective of mathematical logic. In an isolated perspective, one employer (instead of all employers), can arbitrarily change the working time as 7am-4pm instead of 8am-5pm because it's mathematically equivalent to the +1 hour DST.

But society wants to coordinate on a bigger scale than that one employer you were able to convince. (Children's school hours, restaurants, tv schedules, customers calling help desks, etc). Also, the math viewpoint ignores the fact that there are long standing cultural anchors tied to specific times such as 9am-5pm[1].

The bottom line is that it's easier to address the coordination problem by hacking the time via permanent DST rather than adjusting everyone's familiarity around nominal times. Changing out the nominal times displayed in glass windows doesn't look easier than implementing DST. Even changing nominal times in the digital realm is a hassle: think of all the recurring meetings in MS Outlook, Google Calendar, iPhones reminders, etc that say 10am-11am. Millions of people would have to change those times to say 9am-10am. Again, leaving those nominal times the same and fixing it more "globally" via DST seems a lot simpler.

[1]https://www.google.com/search?q=store+opening+closing+times+...

Pxtl• 10 years ago

Not just my boss. Every government office, every schedule, every store's hours, every school, every automated job, every scheduled event everywhere.

If you're going to change all the clocks anyways by eliminating DST changeover, you may as well use the better time.

_ph_• 10 years ago

If we get rid of DST shifting, we should set up the time system such, that across the whole time zone the offset between the astronomical and local time is minimized, perhaps with some bias in the direction of the DST zone. It is worth discussing, whether for example the US should have 2 or 3 time zones.

cauterized2• 10 years ago

Don't we currently have four?

amptorn2• 10 years ago

DST is actually more comfortable to live with by allowing for more daylight after work hours.

Or we could just work slightly different hours? But I guess we're more comfortable altering the definition of time itself...

manigandham4• 10 years ago

Or we could just work slightly different hours?

Sure, if you can convince every single employer, store, school and numerous other places to coordinate then that'll be great. Otherwise changing the timezone setting once is far easier. We do it 2x a year right now anyway.

But I guess we're more comfortable altering the definition of time itself...

Nobody is altering the definition of time. The dictionary entry for that remains the same. What I'm saying is we set the time once and forget about it. We ALREADY do this 2x a year, so this is actually a big improvement on the effort and negative results involved in switching the time.

x4m• 10 years ago

That's what we've done in Russia several years ago. Initialy, after discarding switches, we used summer time, but after two (or more?) years switched back to permanent winter time. Both changes caused lots of glitches in android devices (:

executesorder66• 10 years ago

Why can't they just leave the time alone, and change their working hours during summer and winter?

jon-wood• 10 years ago

I'm seriously considering that right now after it was suggested earlier in the thread. Start at 9am during the summer, and then in winter knock it back to 8am and enjoy the extra sunlight in the evening. Although in practice it would likely have little useful affect since the sun sets about 4pm in the depths of winter round here.

imron2• 10 years ago

If you are the only person in your life, fine.

If you have kids, or a wife or anyone else that you might like to spend daylight time with in the evening then it starts to get harder to manage.

wtbob3• 10 years ago

If you have kids, or a wife or anyone else that you might like to spend daylight time with in the evening then it starts to get harder to manage.

People always say this like it's a compelling argument. But guess what? People lready work different hours; schools and business ar already open for different lengths of time; different businesses and industries already have different norms. People live different distances from work. I've worked 7-4, 8-5, 9-6 and more, and have had commutes as short as ten minutes and as long as two hours.

And you know what? Things work out alright anyway. A world in which individual organizations determine their working hours is the world we already have.

ycmbntrthrwaway2• 10 years ago

Who are "they"? If we are talking about the government, they should leave alone both the time and my working hours. Workers and employers should agree on working hours that are convenient to workers and reduce electricity bills of employers. All that government regulation of working hours, minimum wage and timezones are for wartime or socialism.

dheera2• 10 years ago

I just do my entire calendar in UTC, and keep all my devices in UTC. No daylight savings. I pretty much refuse to use it. It also wreaks havoc on my logs and things.

anexprogrammer2• 10 years ago

Both sides of the Atlantic these sort of articles crop up regularly. Move to summer time year round and so forth.

What is always forgotten is latitude, and that we forget to learn from history and experience.

In Southern England, or California I doubt it's much more than an annoying relic of olden days. But I don't think anyone has true statistics on whether it is or not. Go north and it starts to matter and accident rates go up when you don't have DST.

The UK had an experiment of staying on summer time between 1968 and 1971, introducing British Standard Time. At the end of the period, the vote was to restore the old way, by a large cross party majority.

I believe at the start of the expermient it was generally thought it would confirm the sense of getting rid of summer time permanently. Switching clocks twice a year is annoying after all.

MereInterest• 10 years ago

Interesting. I would have guessed that it would have been the other way around. Go far enough North, and DST is pointless because they're just isn't enough daylight no matter where you put it.

Also, your comparison on latitude is a bit off. London is at a higher latitude than Seattle, for example. It just doesn't get as cold, because you have the Gulf Stream warming it up.

anexprogrammer2• 10 years ago

Wintertime there definitely isn't enough daylight to go around here, but staying on summertime meant that northern England and Scotland wasn't having sunrise until nearing 10am. Dark mornings, it seems, had more effect on accidents than dark evenings.

I just picked southern parts of each nation, rather than checking. It may be that it is more relevant to Canada than US, excepting Alaska. :)

Work and living patterns have changed quite a bit in 50 years too.

_Wintermute• 10 years ago

You realise the UK is further north than the majority of the Canadian population?

bitwize2• 10 years ago

Southern England is more north than northern USA (except Alaska).

fanf23• 10 years ago

The vote to abolish all-year BST was based on politics and idiot campaigning from newspapers that focused on the increase in morning accidents. (Lack of accidents in the evening isn't news.)

There was a government report on accident statistics after the abolition, and contrary to the impression given by the newspapers, the evening accident reduction outweighed the morning accident increase.

bitwize2• 10 years ago

DST will never ever be abolished in this country. A major part of the reason why is evening sports games become more difficult to schedule.

In the USA, sports aren't just sports. They're more like sacraments, tentpole observances which help to shape the order of society.

cauterized2• 10 years ago

Given that evening games are often played under artificial lighting anyway, I don't see what difference it makes in the end.

beefsack• 10 years ago

It might seem crazy and impractical, but I feel that daylight savings is treating a symptom and removing time zones altogether would be treating the cause.

Stunner• 10 years ago

Lol... then everyone would be on one global time? <s>Yeah that sounds super awesome!!!!!!!</s>

DanBC• 10 years ago

One global time would suck for AFK life, but something like Swatch beats would be handy for online stuff.

I'm a bit surprised Mojang haven't implemented something similar.

greggman• 10 years ago

Or have massive unintended consequences

http://qntm.org/abolish

ghaff4• 10 years ago

So now, rather than remembering what timezone someone/some location is, you have to remember instead what is "normal daytime" for that locale. Everyone worldwide isn't going to operate on the same schedule regardless on the position of the sun.

Karunamon• 10 years ago

We have these devices called computers which are quite excellent at this kind of task.

Snark aside, it wouldn't be that hard to have the clocks all set to UTC, and then a second "day equivalent" clock that's used only for translation, but not for actual timekeeping.

sanqui• 10 years ago

It's a shame the website seems to focus on the U.S. only. I would support it and link it if it were a worldwide effort.

fsiefken2• 10 years ago

I live by Wintertime since a few years now under the motto "if you want to change the world start yourself". So only half a year you have to shift your calendar. Main reason for me is that I can easier read the time from the position of the sun in the sky (I don't use a watch). I've my computer, tablet and phone shifted to mediterranean Tunis as they don't have DST there since 2009. http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/tunisia-cancels-dst-200...

runeb• 10 years ago

How do you function in relation to other people?

fsiefken2• 10 years ago

Half a year all appointments I make with others I translate back and forth, but the technology exists to make it easier. I'm just in a different location and timezone then the rest.

stevesun21• 10 years ago

So far I know that Chine made this choose long time ago.

kirian• 10 years ago

A recent article in the Washington Post (Wonkblog) making the case for "Why daylight saving time isn’t as terrible as people think". US centric. The argument uses the data of number of days with "reasonable" sunrise and sunset times based on latitude/longitude when using DST or not.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/11/why-d...

weaksauce• 10 years ago

Let's switch to dst all the time. It's really nice to have an extra hour of light during spring and summer but we lose an hour when the days are shortest during winter. (Where I am in California)

koolba• 10 years ago

While we're at it let's get rid of leap seconds.

... and switch the entire planet to a single timezone (UTC).

... and require everyone use the same text encoding (UTF-8).

... and pick a single format for separating fields in numeric fields (commas for 000s and dots for decimal points).

ycmbntrthrwaway2• 10 years ago

Also switch to metric system.

iso-8859-1• 10 years ago

and \n as the universal line ending? http://utf8everywhere.org/#faq.crlf

Piskvorrr4• 10 years ago

Leap seconds sort of exist to keep UTC in sync with reality (UTC may have 86400 seconds per normal day, which is not the same interval during which the planet completes a single rotation - and worse, the real interval is wobbly).

bitwalker2• 10 years ago

UTC is intrinsically linked to leap seconds, that's why it's called Coordinated Universal Time, because it's coordinated to shifts in the solar year using leap seconds. I do think everyone using UTC + an offset would be a great switch though.

Piskvorrr4• 10 years ago

I thought that's what time zones do: "it's UTC on server, the user is in +01,add a hour to current time, format and show it to them."

minikites2• 10 years ago

My favorite counterargument:

http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-dst/

If we stayed on Standard Time throughout the year, sunrise here in the Chicago area would be between 4:15 and 4:30 am from the middle of May through the middle of July. And if you check the times for civil twilight, which is when it’s bright enough to see without artificial light, you’ll find that that starts half an hour earlier. This is insane and a complete waste of sunlight.
If, by the way, you think the solution is to stay on DST throughout the year, I can only tell you that we tried that back in the 70s and it didn’t turn out well. Sunrise here in Chicago was after 8:00 am, which put school children out on the street at bus stops before dawn in the dead of winter.

DST is the only sensible option in my opinion.

gerbilly• 10 years ago

Sunrise here in Chicago was after 8:00 am, which put school children out on the street at bus stops before dawn in the dead of winter.

Well, that's no longer a problem because children are never left unsupervised anymore.

qjighap• 10 years ago

I live in a a pocket region doesn't have Daylight Saving. This year we added the town of Fort Nelson to our little time zone. Nobody concretely seems to remember why we started to do this, but it is generally agreed on that we do it for business reasons. Much of our business is tied to our neighbors to the east in a different time zone. With the winter months typically being more busy. Coordinating resources is much easier given this system. I thought I would throw a counter argument into the ring, although I would state it is an edge case.

Also, I am thrilled about news being at 11 again.

paulddraper• 10 years ago

It's Daylight Saving, not Daylight Savings.

xirdstl• 10 years ago

I can't help but think some of these statistics are ridiculous fear mongering, particularly the heart attacks.

"Get rid of DST! If you get up an hour earlier than usual, you might die!"

sugarfactory• 10 years ago

I think Daylight Saving Time is a bad idea in the same sense that (abusing) global variables is a bad idea in programming.

In programming, changing a global state in order to achieve something is almost always a bad practice because it affects everywhere and sometimes in unpredictable ways. Instead of abusing global states, we invented object-oriented programming, which I consider as a way to keep states locally (inside objects).

So if someone wants to save daylight, that should be achieved locally for example by changing school schedules.

cromulent4• 10 years ago

I think perhaps the global variable in this case is the tilt of the Earth's axis and the Earth's orbital position. The local variable is the offset in your local hemisphere / longitude.

transfire2• 10 years ago

Split the difference (30 mins) and be done with it. Please.

ianbicking• 10 years ago

DST is about the compromise between two reasonable scheduling systems: in one you use a 24 hour day with a clear landmark (noon, when the sun is highest in the sky). In another model you use sunrise as a natural beginning to the day.

Sunrise is a bit complicated, and in winter it compresses the afternoon more than many people would like. Also hard to build the necessary clocks. So we simplify things and make a compromise between the two systems, and we get DST.

fanf23• 10 years ago

Clearly DST should be improved to better match the sunrise! http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.10.html#subj1

mshenfield• 10 years ago

I was most interested by how the generated the tweets with my state and county representatives. The scripts is all in js/app.js and uses maxmind's geoip lookup to get back location information. It then uses the Sunlight Foundation's api with the loaction information to pull back the twitter ids for the reps. Cool stuff.

toast0• 10 years ago

There's actually a bill in the California Legislature to present removal of DST to the voters[1], DST was imposed on the state by the voters in 1949, so it must similarly be removed by the voters.

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

mbfg• 10 years ago

Love DLST personally, don't want to get up in the pitch black in the winter, but want long light in the evenings in summer. perfect.

Stop Using the Daylight Savings Time

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