RescueTime: Daylight Savings Time costs the United States $480,000,000

http://blog.rescuetime.com/2009/03/11/daylight-savings-time-costs-the-united-states-480000000/

by ivankirigin • 17 years ago

43 38 17 years ago

blog.rescuetime.com

CWuestefeld2• 17 years ago

I've long contended that DST is dangerous and a money hole, although not in the way that this article addresses. Anyone who lives to the west of a major metro area will understand my point.

Twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall, commuters experience a period during which the sun is right in their eyes. For those of us driving east in the morning, and west in the evening, the sun is right in front of us all the time, and when it's at the right (wrong) elevation, vision is painfully obscured.

Earlier in the year the sun is too low to bother; later, the sun has risen high enough that your visor can block it. But for that time period, traffic is terrible because drivers can't see where they're going.

The thing about DST is that it resets this period. After having made it through once, DST drags the clock around so that we must endure the same sun glare again.

Once you start to think about this effect, it's clear that it must be costing fuel and lost productivity from the traffic, and likely even injuries and lives from accidents.

kirse• 17 years ago

There's a DOE study that shows extending DST saves energy and also has no statistically significant effect on fuel consumption... So this $480m "lost" productivity is potentially offset by energy savings across the US.

I'm also less inclined to believe the RescueTime productivity number when they take their own solid figures on user involvement and then mix them in with a few SWAGs to come up with what people now believe is a solid figure. Once you throw BS into the recipe you've spoiled the final product.

From the DOE report--- Changes in national traffic volume and motor gasoline consumption for passenger vehicles in 2007 were determined to be statistically insignificant and therefore, could not be attributed to Extended Daylight Saving Time.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/ba/pba/pdfs/epact_sec_110_edst_r...

jacoblyles• 17 years ago

well, do you get to skip the bad period on the other side?

CWuestefeld2• 17 years ago

[I retract my answer, this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=514142 is much better]

chairface• 17 years ago

Unfortunately, no.

In the spring the sunrise is getting earlier as time goes by. Then the clock jumps forward an hour, which makes sunrise an hour later, causing the repeat the op talked about.

In the fall, sunrise is getting later. The clock jumps backward an hour, which makes sunrise an hour earlier. This causes the same repeat, in reverse (aka, trending darker rather than lighter).

edit: Also, I have the experience to back this up. I've been one of the living west of my workplace people for too long.

mace• 17 years ago

Is the problem here commuting, in general?

ewiethoff3• 17 years ago

(~_~) I know what you mean about the sun in your eyes. As a kid, I spent year after year with the sun in my eyes as I rode the school bus 15 miles each way. I told myself, "This is stupid. When I grow up, I'm not going to live west of town." The odd thing is, the vast majority of development takes place west of that city, for no major geographical reason. I shake my head in wonder at the thought of so many people trying to drive with the sun smack in their eyes a couple hours every day. And yes, you're right, the time changes reposition the sun in front of your eyes.

mynameishere• 17 years ago

I vowed the same thing years ago when I lived west of my job location. Squinting while driving 55 in stop-and-go traffic? Eh, no thanks.

mikeryan2• 17 years ago

in the numbers pulled out of our ass department.....

I'm not effective my first hour at work anyway. Its coffee and email time. Second the lighter day has a tendency to make me more apt to work longer - there's no accounting for that.

jcl2• 17 years ago

These guys write software that tracks how long you spend in each program. You are describing exactly the kind of thing that they can account for.

webwright• 17 years ago

FWIW, these numbers are pulled out of an orifice that contains hundreds of millions of second-by-second attention data.... Not our asses.

Now, I'll concede that some of the other numbers (salaries of knowledge workers, numbers of knowledge workers, etc) are not toooo thoroughly researched, but they are in the neighborhood.

A commenter suggested that "we make it up on the other end" (with "fall back"), so we compared the fall DST to typical mondays and found that PEOPLE LOGGED BELOW AVERAGE TIME THERE AS WELL (which was a bit of a surprise). I'm assuming that people take the extra time they get if they wake up early to have a hearty breakfast or watch the news or somesuch.

mikeryan2• 17 years ago

points for the orifice comment, i liked that one ;-)

But a few more points

One the time isn't lost, as long as I've been working we've been changing our clocks. Its time already counted for in the natural cycle of business. Same as the lost productivity around 3 day weekends - and productivity gained by leap years.

Second if you can it would be interesting to compare productivity from the 3 weeks prior to the time change to the 3 week post the time change - I posited that I'd work more in the days after the time change due to the additional light at the end of day. I'd like to see if this is true.

rudyfink• 17 years ago

The loss of sixteen (16) minutes of office time twice a year has a cost, clearly. I will add that my rhythm takes a hit for at least a week on each shift too. I suspect other people share that cost too. That written, in my opinion, the cost is more than worth it.

In exchange for the cost of thirty-two (32) minutes I get ~eight (8) months of an extra hour of daylight later on in the day (~240 hours more). I'd argue that this has a benefit to people. Further, I'd argue this benefit outweighs the cost.

This article strikes me as only pointing out the thing that is seen and wholly ignoring the unseen. It is cute but reality is not nearly so simple. In the context of a company that makes monitoring software, this article makes sense. They produce a metric, their view is through that metric, and they report the metric.

jcl2• 17 years ago

If possible, it might be interesting to compare the data for Arizona with neighboring states. Apparently Arizona does not observe daylight savings time.

While the conclusions from such a comparison may not necessarily apply to more northern states, it would give an additional point of reference. (It's a pity they don't have data for Indiana in 2005, which only went to daylight savings time in 2006...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_the_United_States#Dayli...

nuclear_eclipse• 17 years ago

> Apparently Arizona does not observe daylight savings time.

Neither does Indiana.

ucdaz• 17 years ago

Does anyone have any ideas to get the gov't to ban daylight savings time?

ivankirigin2• 17 years ago

It might be most effective on a state by state basis. A few states opting out might make the others complain for Federal action, which would then do away with the system, hopefully.

tlrobinson3• 17 years ago

Daylights savings also increases the number of heart attacks http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/359/18/1966

ars• 17 years ago

How much does it earn on the other side? People are extra productive on the day they get that extra hour of sleep.

time_management2• 17 years ago

$480m / 300m people = $1.60 per person.

DST covers 2/3 of the work-year, or approximately 160 work days. So it buys us 160 hours of extra evening light. (I'm not counting weekends, because then the distinction between the hour lost of morning light and that gained of evening light is immaterial.) That means we're paying $0.01 each per hour of evening light. I'll take that deal.

In truth, I find that DST sucks for about 3 days, but after I've adjusted, I'm very glad it's there. I'm not a dairy farmer, though.

ivankirigin2• 17 years ago

Doesn't DST make less light in the evening in the winter, in order to have more in the morning? It's the winter that's behind, right?

time_management2• 17 years ago

No. Standard time is (in most places) closer to solar time.

The issue is that, when political time is fixed, most people naturally develop a habit of waking up around the winter sunrise, year-round. This means that 1-3 hours of light, during the rest of the year, are "wasted".

Some anti-DST advocates have proposed making DST year-round, effectively taking the time zone that is one hour eastward. The problem is that this would put the winter sunrises into the 8:00 am hour, which people tend to like even less than a mid-afternoon sunset.

mhb• 17 years ago

Heart attack risk and daylight saving time: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507343

ewiethoff3• 17 years ago

What strikes me as weird is that for the past few years, the US has spent more weeks in the calendar in DST than in Standard time, thereby making the "standard" an aberration. Standard time has become a misnomer.

tlrobinson3• 17 years ago

It's "standard" relative to the rest of the world, no?

tlrobinson3• 17 years ago

Instead of (or in addition to) downvoting me, can you explain why I'm wrong?

doki_pen• 17 years ago

Statistics like this are just as silly as "Employees using YouTube costs the US 500 Trillion a year". Most knowledge workers don't work 9-5. They work until the work is done. What they missed Monday morning will be made up for during the rest of the week. I do hate Daylight Savings though..

aneesh• 17 years ago

I agree, that knowledge workers usually work until the work is done. But 16 lost minutes from DST, or half-an-hour on YouTube, has a cost. It may not affect whether the work is done, but it probably does affect the quality of the work done. It's a zero-sum game, and something's gotta give - either work quality or quantity has to decrease, or else time spent on work has to increase.

But it's a good question to ask. Maybe Tony & Co can tell us whether workers make up for this loss over the course of the week.

lionhearted• 17 years ago

The link to Useit.com on loaded cost was interesting too, if a little dense in language:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/loadedcost.html

jfornear• 17 years ago

Annual revenues/profits take a hit on leap years, too.

heyadayo• 17 years ago

The article is off by a factor of at least 2, given that $50,000/year -> 25$/hr, not $50/hr.

Moreover, everyone wastes time every day at the job, except sometimes, when they have deadlines. If a worker misses 16 minutes some Monday, they'll probably make it up over the course of the week.

Big deal.

jganetsk• 17 years ago

It's not called daylight savings time. It's daylight saving time.

sho• 17 years ago

What's the point of articles like this? You can find any number of things which "cost" any amount of "lost productivity". If a few minutes lost to DST is such a big issue, what about Youtube? Shouldn't the government ban that?

The whole thing is a beat-up. Human nature, not any particular outside cause, is responsible for "lost" time. And human nature picks it right back up, too - this idea that "minutes spent with an app open" is some kind of definitive measure of productivity is utterly useless.

What is it with people and DST, anyway? I've never had even the slightest problem with it. Time zones are pretty much arbitrary, and we have to constantly adjust them anyway (witness the leap second at beginning of this year). All the infrastructure to do that is already in place. I don't see why it's such a huge issue. Personally, I like it - if we didn't have DST here, the sun would come up before 5am. I find the arguments about "the sun is in my eyes when commuting" utterly spurious, the sun is always going to be in someone's eyes.

Don't see what the problem is or what necessitates these contrived justifications against it.

rekstrom2• 17 years ago

wear sun glasses

rekstrom2• 17 years ago

If DST is taken away people will say it cost money for electricity in; the work place, at home, lights on car...Also people might not be able to see to drive when it is so dark, when driving in a cold area the snow or ice will not melt as fast. Cars will have to use chains for their tires more often, it will be really cold outside when people go to work, after school sports will be held at the hottest time of the day...

RescueTime: Daylight Savings Time costs the United States $480,000,000

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