Why is daylight savings time still a thing?
That made me wonder — who is it that is supporting this game of clocks? Who cares? Or is it simply institutional inertia?
I went looking, and found one source with some arguments for it.
This study stood as gospel for years, with little research conducted to support or refute it. Then, in May 2001, the California Energy Commission spearheaded a study to analyze the effects of winter DST and double daylight saving time (a two-hour time shift) on the state’s electricity usage. The study concluded that winter DST would cut winter peak electricity use by 3.4 percent. Summer double DST would result in smaller reductions, but would still be beneficial because it would shift electricity use from high-demand afternoon hours to low-demand morning hours. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reported similar findings in 2008 after conducting research as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. According to DOE data, DST resulted in total electricity savings of about 1.3 terawatt-hours, or 0.03 percent of electricity consumption over the year.
OK, that’s a real savings — a tiny savings, but if the data supports it, it’s better than nothing. It’s hard to believe that people are serious about it, though: if you want big savings, recommend that people adjust their thermostats to a less energy-intensive regime. Wouldn’t that make more sense if your concern is reducing energy consumption?
But here come the real supporters, and they’re very silly.
The benefits of daylight saving time go beyond energy conservation, if you believe its supporters. Advocates of the practice argue that allowing drivers to return home in the daylight reduces traffic accidents during the evening rush hour. They also suggest that DST prevents crime because it limits a person’s exposure to criminals, who usually conduct their business under the cloak of darkness. Finally, the sports and recreation industries are rabid fans of daylight saving time. In 1986, for example, representatives of the golf industry lobbied for extended DST, arguing that an extra month of DST was worth up to $400 million annually in extra sales and fees.
So, paranoid golfers are behind DST? I knew it had to be a Republican conspiracy.
We’re about to go off daylight saving in NZ and I’m depressed about it. The long pleasant summer evenings are something I look forward to. I don’t get up at dawn, either with or without daylight saving so I benefit from the pleasantness without suffering any loss.
I notice a lot of people referring to air conditioning costs when talking about DST but we don’t use that much in NZ so it’s largely irrelevant to us, and I’ve only one clock that needs manual adjustment these days. It’s not a trial and I don’t understand how anyone thinks it’s a pain.
Simple thing- DST lets you (all of us) have a longer day-lit evening. It also makes dawn come later in the morning. More people make use of day-lit evenings than day-lit early mornings.
We still have DST in front of us and man, do I hate it. It usally takes about two weeks to get the kids adjusted to the new schedule because they still have these very basic wake-sleep patterns where they get up the same every day (including Sundays) and are very grumpy if things change.
It tends to throw everyone into jet lag. I think there are studies that show there are more traffic accidents after the time switch.
The closer you are to the pole the more DST benefits you. However the benefit is still tiny. Nevertheless there is a way to make DST even worse that it is – by having different regions in a single country use different DST regimes. Canada has it, Australia has it, but the former (and perhaps still) champion was Arizona with its truly stupid inconsistencies.
Finally, DST really does claim lives, here’s an example.
@AlexanderZ –
Actually the story you linked to shows that DST *saved* lives – of the targets of the bombs!
I don’t know if there are really any actual savings as far as energy. And when it comes to the assertion that there are more accidents because of the hour time change, this sets off my Bullshit Detector. Is there a rash of accidents when people drive from Chicago to Indianapolis and have to work after suffering that dreaded one hour shift of the clock? I have my doubts. I understand that children might need some short adjustment time. Hard to believe that takes more than a couple of days. DST gives me more daylight in the evening hours during spring and summer. That’s all the reason I need.
I really like DST, with its long day-light afternoons and everything. What I don’t understand is why we don’t do it in winter, when the extra hour of sunlight would actually make a difference…
Contrarian here: Why is DST still a controversy? Haven’t we had it our whole lives? It was a WW1 innovation to “save energy”. Which I think remains a flimsy justification with slim to no evidence thereof. What is the issue with adjusting our clocks to synchronize people a little more closely to solar daytime; i.e. get up shortly after dawn, work 8 hours, and then, still have sunshine to enjoy the outdoors. When daylite gets shorter and sunrise later with sunset earlier and airtemps colder, readjust the clock to stay synchronized with work starting a little after dawn. The root issue is that we define our day by clocks not sunshine. This is one issue I think would be nice to “get back to nature”. Not all hippy-stuff, just base our schedules a little closer to the solar schedule. DST is just a little step in that direction, we don’t need to substitute sundials for our eclocks.
</soapbox>
I remember when Nixon < the INfamous ;-) > instituted Year-Round DST to try to deal with the OilCrisis. But being a bussed school kid at the time, morning bus stop was before dawn; and being young we were spooked by that situation.
I’d be more than happy to ditch DST. I feel like I have the worst case of jet lag ever.
Bah, I’m convinced the complainers are just people who hate losing an hour of sleep one day a year. You don’t hear a lot of “We should get rid of DST!” in late October, do you?
I personally would prefer it if we kept DST all year round. People whose jobs honestly depend on the amount of sunlight in their work day (e.g. farming, fishing) will operate by the natural clock anyway, regardless of what our timepieces say. Similarly, those who do a lot of international business and need second-shift employees (e.g call centers), or businesses that run 24 hours a day (e.g. hospitals, many manufacturing plants, some retail), will arrange their work hours irrespective of how sunlight aligns with the numbers on the clock.
The only people it makes a difference for are folks whose employers are wedded to the 9-5 (or thereabouts) work day. Since I am one of them, yes, I like DST.
twas brillig:
Imho, it isn’t the adjusting the clocks that are at issue: It is the people adjusting that is harder. A sudden drastic one hour shift kind of fucks with you. Especially in regard to sleep schedule, which creates issues, whether in terms of personal health or in terms of work quality and driving ability.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-daylight-saving-time/2015/03/06/970092d4-c2c1-11e4-9271-610273846239_story.html
And children stand in the darkness by the side of the road waiting for school buses.
frog:
Yeah, everyone is little baby whiner who just wants an excuse to be lazy, except you.
(Honestly, I DO complain about DST most in October.)
DST, one of my mortal enemies. Hey, it’s the 10th anniversary of Indiana joining the Stupid and Arbitrary Time Change Team.
15 years of not doing it and not really knowing it’s a thing has painted it to me as a very good example of stupid human arbitrariness. And apparently research for Indiana showed its switch to DST has actually increased energy consumption, so, whatever?
Anyway. I just don’t change my clocks. I even got my schedule changed to an hour later, WHICH MEANS, that my schedule is in fact completely unchanged because I’m still going at the same time I did a week ago.
Aloha from Hawaii… Where we do not observe DST.
I happen to like DST because it means there’s more daylight during the hours when I, personally, am awake.
But I wouldn’t claim that’s a good argument for maintaining the practice nationwide.
I as a working adult I welcome DST for one simple reason: More of my summer free time is during the warmth of the day. I work a standard 9-5 (while flexible, I have to be at the computer during these hours, and often match other people’s schedule.)
DST allows me to end at 4, meaning that in June or during the school holidays I can pick up my daughter from my ex’s place and we can go swimming in the outdoor pool, especially on those days when it’s a bit chilly in the afternoon. It means we can go cycling and enjoy the afternoon warmth during spring and autumn DST days, with an extra hour of sunlight, meaning we get further, cycle safer, don’t have to hurry as much. Oh and DST also makes those summer evenings and summer nights sitting in the local pub’s back garden luxuriously long and more pleasant.
Yes, those are all highly subjective things, and I could probably get an agreement with my employer to work 8-4 during the summer months if we didn’t have DST, but that’s pretty much been the argument for me.
And when I finish work on those summer days and walk outside and see all the other puffing sweaty workers walking out onto the street, once more beginning to relax, towels and swimsuits and toddlers clutched in hand, and then by the water, enjoying a summers day… yes I like my extra summer hour.
Daylight Saving Time doesn’t cause the longer evening.
That would be axial tilt.
My sleep is too disturbed every night to have any notable effect from DST shifts either way. Since I take my first set of meds at 7am, and then lie down to wait for effectiveness, the policy benefits me somewhat, but not so much I’d care. I can certainly see how it would be very disruptive to people who have regular sleep, though.
Why are people referring DST as affecting the months from early March to late October (i.e. Spring, Summer, and half of fall) rather than just affecting the time between late October and early March (i.e. half of fall, and winter)? Does it really make sense to think of DST as an additional hour adjustment to eight months, instead of thinking of it as an hour adjustment to the four darkest months and with every other month having, you know, “normal” time?
I hate DST…. in the winter months, I drive to to work in the fucking dark, and get home in the fucking dark, and because I’m in a building all day I don’t get to see the sun except through the occasional window.
I’m also very affected by anything that shortens the amount of sleep I get, as I’m already chronically sleep deprived. Despite getting 8 hours of sleep today, I’m so exhausted still from yesterday that moving takes herculean effort and my brain feels encased in lead. It’s fucking awful and really does not serve a single bloody useful purpose. It’s going to take me about 3 weeks to recover fully and switch over, which is going to negatively affect the quality of my work.
Fucking idiots ought to look up “drowsy driving” and “sleep schedules actual earth human bodies have.”
Also, the reason we have DST is the same reason “normal business hours” start two hours before reasonable people’s brains do: because the fucking Puritan influence polluting American culture left us with the idea that getting up super fucking early in the morning is not just convenient if you have work to do that relies on the sun for proper lighting but inherently virtuous. Even though it observably makes things worse for all but a small percentage of the population.
We had segregation our whole lives, too. DST certainly isn’t nearly as bad, but “we had it our whole lives” isn’t a justification for something that causes actual problems.
mikeinohio
Yeah, I mean, it’s a couple (about 14) days of pure stress in the mornings and evenings for families with small children, but I’m glad that’s a price you’re willing to make me pay for your nice long summer evenings.
+++
BTW, DST costs companies with timetables like railway companies and such real money. Because you cannot just act as if that hour never vanished from your timetable and track plans and so on.
Maybe the Powers That Be should also mandate afternoon naps.
axial tilt!
I think there is a little Pavlov in understanding DST.
I thought that the day got longer at both ends in the morning and evening and noon was when the sun was in the middle of the sky.
I seems to me that what we really get by shifting the fucking clock was more like 1/2 an hour of morning light shifted toward sunset. I know that does not sound right but neither does shifting the clock to make the day longer, but we live so disconnected from reality that we can think changing the clock does something except pointless disruption.
uncle frogy
anteprepro @14: Frankly, I’m staggered by the number of people who are complaining that the one-hour shift screws up their sleep patterns for more than a day. I’m guessing those folks never travel to other time zones? I get that circadian rhythms are a thing, but the number of sunlight hours is going to change regardless of how we actually number those hours.
The folks with kids and a school schedule have a reasonable objection. We can make ourselves do what we need to, but kids have perfected the art of resistance.
For me, part of the problem is using clocks that don’t follow the sunrise I use a light on a timer to wake up in winter.
I found a sunrise calendar/calculator, and here in Austin TX there is a two hour difference between when the sun rises at the summer and winter solstices. In Minneapolis there is a THREE hour difference.
fentex @ # 1: …and I’ve only one clock that needs manual adjustment these days.
Give it a little longer and just about all timepieces will be internet-synchronized. Then we can adopt Benjamin Franklin’s suggestion: for two months (60 days) in the spring, set the clocks one minute ahead each day; for two months each fall, set ’em back one minute per day. No muss no fuss!
Gee, sorry Frog that apparently I’m so completely incomprehensible to you. I’m also sorry that I don’t have enough money to regularly travel to different time zones and thereby somehow magically cure my sleep issues because reasons. /s
Mornings are hard for me, because of my shitty sleep. I’m usually bloody wide awake until midnight or 1am, no matter what I do, when I try to go to bed, etc. I usually wake up at least 3 or 4 times during the night that I can remember, just long enough to turn over into some new position. I need 9 hours of sleep to function properly upon wakening. My job starts at 7:30am and I leave my house at 7am. This means ever night I’m getting a whopping 6-ish hours of sleep. As such, I usually get up all of 15 minutes before I have to drive for work, desperate for every minute of snooze time I can get. It typically takes me two hours to get my brain in gear, but as the first couple hours of my job don’t require much brain power, there is no real problem.
So yes. Fucking making me get up an hour earlier, when my go-to-bed time refuses to change is fucking painful and detrimental as shit and takes a goddamn bloody long time to recover from.
But I’m fucking sorry that it ‘staggers’ you.
No, you smug possibly-ableist piece of shit, it’s that people’s individual physiologies and life situations fucking vary.
Great bootstrapping, frog, master of all bodily rhythms and bodily functions. Look, I’m not that affected personally by the time change either. But you see, unlike you, I actually don’t generalize my personal experiences to everyone else on the planet. Already provided a link and quote of the relevant info on the subject. Your befuddlement doesn’t change facts. It just makes you look like an ass.
Oh fuck you. You sound just like the “why don’t the poor just work harder like I do?” shitheads.
I have to side with Rowan and the others who have major problems with time shifts. I feel like crap today and will feel like crap for a couple of weeks. This has nothing to do with how light or dark it is outside. Last Friday I went to sleep and woke up before my alarm because my body is used to sleeping and getting up at a certain amount of time, usually after about 7 hours of sleep and completing I think 4 or 5 sleep cycles. I would prefer to get more sleep per night but I am functional and okay.
Last night I had to try to go to sleep an hour earlier. Guess what? My body didn’t think it was time to sleep yet, so I was awake. And this morning when the alarm went off, it was an hour earlier than my body thought it needed to wake. Woke up right in the middle of the sleep cycle, which messes with my entire body. And this shit will continue all this week at least.
And I don’t need a kid to have a “justified” objection to this.
Oh and for the record I bitch about the fall time change too because then I’m driving to work and home in the pitch fucking dark.
Personally I love spring forward and detest fall backwards, but then my longitude within my time zone is such that the time sun is highest is closer to noon during DST than otherwise, I might have felt differently if I lived closer to the eastern end of the time zone.
When the child was in elementary school, the only times they were out in the dark was when they had before school activities (math club), but in high school they are out in the dark several months of the year, most of that time during non-DST months. My husband actually prefers to have morning commute in the dark (and likes being able to garden after work). I like having evening commute in the daylight, and the first week of non-DST is somewhat saddening each year.
Back in Israel the argument was that having non-DST in the summer was bad for people’s sleep because the early light awakes people long before they need to (even though Israel tends to have earlier school and work hours that the US, with most places starting at 8 am). Those who had the choice (such as agricultural communities) shifted their hours towards an earlier schedule in summer regardless of the clock time.
I think we should have it all the time. Best of both worlds, longer sunlit evenings and skipping the pain in the as of the transitory periods. Problem solved.
You’re welcome.
I just saw this article today, from the New England Journal of Medicine. For all of Canada except Saskatchewan, traffic accidents on the Monday after the spring shift were twice what they were the previous Monday. So yes, the sleep disruption has a measurable effect.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199604043341416
We still have three weeks until changing the clocks to summer time.
I’m not terribly bothered by it, but I wouldn’t mind if we could just stick with one. Similarly to Rowan, I need a lot of sleep, so anything that bothers my sleep cycle isn’t welcome.
And no, frog, I do not travel to other time zones.
anat,
When I was in Bosnia last summer, despite changing to summer time, at the place I was working people also had the option of starting work one hour earlier during the summer months so that they would have more of the summer days left.
That was really enjoyable, because it felt like I had most of the day left to spend outside after work even thought I was working the same as usual.
Farmers, and especially dairy farmers, were among the most strongly opposed to daylight savings when it first appeared. The problem is that it means that they have to get their goods to the market an hour earlier. And cows can’t tell time.
As for me, I’d rather just choose one and stick with it. And after sending our son off to walk to school in the dark this morning (a walk which involves crossing a very busy street without the benefit of a traffic light), I’d rather stick with “Standard” time.
One thing that always struck me about Spain is how late sunset is in the summer–roughly 10 pm at the solstice–despite it being relatively far south. It’s a combination of daylight savings and being in the wrong time zone–most of Spain is west of Greenwich, but it’s in the same time zone as France and Germany and Italy.
So even though Spaniards have a reputation for being night owls, in the middle of the summer most of them are eating dinner not long after sunset, and getting up right around sunrise.
Mmmm, daylight savings time has been a feature of my southern hemisphere life for the last 50 years, I’ll miss it when it goes in a short few weeks. Always hated early mornings, let there be light after dinner for a spot of outdoors enjoyment.
I’ve got problems that interfere with my sleep anyway and simply don’t adjust well to time changes. I feel physically sick for the first week after the time change, in either directions. I can’t just make myself go to bed an hour earlier than normal–it’s hard enough to go to sleep when I want to without time changes–and I actually get nauseated if I have to wake up earlier than my body wants to. The fall back isn’t quite as bad, but I’m getting sleepy and useless an hour earlier and thus losing an hour of actual work time, because my job relies on my productivity, not just punching a clock.
Hey, it’s awesome that some people don’t have the same problems, but I can’t fucking bootstrap my way out of sleep disorders.
I oppose Daylight Savings Time because the extra hour of sunlight fades my drapes and outdoor furniture.
Half-hour change and keep it all year, that would be my choice.
DST came on the heels of a stressful, time-adjusted two weeks for us this year, with everyone staying up an hour or so later than normal bedtime every night anyway because of Scheduled Things. So it really threw us for a loop this year, being already exhausted by the time it hit. I took two naps yesterday and two today and still don’t feel right.
A few years ago, a few days before the switchover to DST, one of my colleagues (an EE BTW) blew me away when he said that the extra hour of sunlight would be great for his garden. Assuming he was joking, I smiled in response, and then, he clarified that he really thought DST provided an extra hour of Sunlight. I left the lunch table speechless, not wanting to offend him, nor berate him for being “deluded” about DST. That incident so floored me in its absurdity that I retain it, even to this day, and repeat it at the slightest mention of DST~algia.
Frog @28:
It screws my system over so hard I don’t recover until time to change back to real time.
I LOATHE this time change, and everything it heralds — more daylight, coming heat (already coming way too fast in Sux Carolina)…always have, even as a child. So yes, come November (as it is so tragically no longer an October holiday) I am indeed still cussing the evils of DST, and stating emphatically it needs to die a flaming brutal death, even as I embrace the Most Glorious Day of the Year, the return to real time and an end of that misery for me. DST is of the devil.
But I love colder weather, and longer nights, too, though. Darkness works for me. Longer daylight when it’s hot? I’ll never want that.
It always amazes me that a bunch of jumped up monkeys can order the sun to get up one hour later on a particular day and make it actually happen.
It’s funny – in the civilised parts of Australia, daylight saving is a shibboleth: people who rant about it are automatically marked and identified as crackpots. It’s not quite the chemtrails & Big Pharma level of lunacy, but it’s a warning sign. I guess it’s different in different parts of the world, but it’s one of those cultural differences that amuses me.
Well, the bloody time change just fucks everything up for me. Sleep, appetite, moods, ability to function.
I’mma be on “autopilot” for the next however long it takes me to adjust this time.
Eric TF Bat
How’s Roberto doing?
@#9 twas brillig: Greetings from Indiana. This state began DST ten years ago because… I dunno, political donations? I’ve tried both, and by both I mean completely ignore DST to the detriment of my father’s sanity, and let me just say…
@#21 anteprepro: Indeed! But then why are we adjusting to the dark months when the lack of DST then basically says there’s no reason to adjust. I’d actually be fine if we just had a single time all year round. Adjust your mind, not your clock.
@#24 Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :): 11:30-20:00 work schedule yeeeeah. Get up at 8 and spend a few hours waking up. I’m pretty sure those Puritans had it absolutely backwards?? Gee, what a surprise.
@28 frog: Actually. That’s part of why I’m pretty sure humans were not made to have schedules, at least stone-set schedules. I sure wasn’t. When I’m not working I tend to stay up 16 to 18 hours and sleep for 10 to 12. Eventually my schedule just wraps around so one week I’m up at night and one week I’m up at day. AND I’M JUST FINE *head falls off*
Anyway I hereby declare the entire year to be on DOT time, or Duth Olec Time. 6 AM is now noon. Take that away and bring me breakfast. And DOT time also uses 24-hour system.
Gee, I always feel chatty about DST. I guess because of Opinions.
I do. This typically coincides with long workdays, so I tend to abandon anything resembling a regular sleep schedule during the trip and take about a week to return to full functional capacity after I return.
That explains it.
Eric TF Bat@50: Australia is far from unified in this. Certainly New South Wales and Victoria have it, but Queensland and (my own) Western Australia don’t.
Indeed, every few years (or so it seems) we get a change of government in West Oz and they hold a referendum: “Would you like daylight savings time to be introduced?”
We all vote, “No”.
We get it anyway. Then, after the trial period of a couple of years is over, there is another referendum: “Would you like to keep daylight savings time?”
We all vote, “No”, and it goes back to “normal”.
Point is, that “Australians don’t argue about daylight savings time” is not correct – not all Australians have it, and those of us in Western Australia certainly argue about it when it changes.
frog@11
I’m guessing you’ve never worked a night shift.
Yep. SA, NSW, VIC and Tassie think it’s the only sensible thing to do. Queensland, NT and WA are literally outliers on this. Every now and again, Queensland has another go at lining up their summer time with the rest of the East Coast but it’s always been knocked back.
So we finish up with 5 timezones during summer, 2 down the East Coast, 2 Central and 1 Western. And all us southerners make remarks about the deep north and other not-so-nice, parochial, oneupmanship insults/jokes. And any anti-DST crank in the southern states gets tagged as being one of “them”. A lot of people complain about kids staying up too late because of the longer day – but I remember from my childhood my own and other parents grumbling about us getting up “early” and doing stuff at sun up. It’s the long summer days that are the real problem for parents of young kids, not the daylight savings.
WA being one further hour behind really makes very little difference to the rest of us because they’re so far away in the first place. (Though it seems that it’s an advantage for companies that run nationwide call centre services.) But NT and SA being an hour different from each other, and QLD from all the other eastern states can be really frustrating. The one that always gets to me is SA being a half hour ahead of QLD, rather than a half hour behind. Feels strange.
Really, mildlymagnificent@59 – you’re going to say 3/7 states constitutes “outliers”? 4/7 is barely even a majority, let alone overwhelming enough to say that the rest are outliers.
Though I’ll give you one thing – DST is probably the only thing Victoria and New South Wales have ever been observed to agree about. :)
Well, frog, it looks like you don’t get jetlag, and mikeinohio doesn’t, and I don’t (well, hardly). Most people, however, are more like drst. I have no idea how you have managed not to notice.
And Poland.
I don’t care one way or another for DST. It’s only the transition that I hate. As far as I can tell, it only really exists so that we’re on the same time schedule as the U.S. states that border my province. The mornings are going to be dark for a part of the winter here, regardless of which.
What’s “fun” about DST in the fall is when you’re working a 12-hour overnight shift and you see that clock go back in time and you get to work that hour again.
What’s “fun” about DST in the spring is when you’re working a 12-hour overnight shift and you see that clock go forward in time and you lose that hour of pay.
See, the glass is always half-full!
Maybe we should fall-back some time in the afternoon so all those lovers of long, sunny evenings get that extra hour when they can really use it! I guess if more businesses had to pay this one stupid, needless overtime hour every year we might do away with it. Money talks!