11 ms·

Stop Using the Daylight Savings Time

301 points by pbkhrv 11y ago

wlesieutre 11y 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_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...
- terinjokes 11y 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.
  - wlesieutre 11y 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 11y 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/wp14-05.pdf http://www.colorado.edu/economics/papers/WPs-14/wp14-05/wp14...
  - ghaff 11y 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-vn 11y 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.
  - caf 11y 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.
    - dheera 11y ago
      Sure, and going out on a rainy day probably increases your chance of being struck by lightning by 10000%.
    - pille 11y ago
      1.25*(a really tiny risk of a heart attack on a given day) This same numerical trick happened when the WHO classified red meat as a carcinogen "in the same category as" cigarettes, and it was stated that it increased your risk of some cancer by ~50% (or something), but the baseline risk is so low that it's a lot less dramatic than it sounds.
      - aws_ls 11y ago
        This. When I asked a doctor, who was suggesting 'a certain med would reduce chances of some cardio incident by some 10s of percent' (I don't remember, specific details), as to what is the base percent if would be affecting, he sort of evaded the answer.
  - mjs7231 11y 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.
- caf 11y ago
  It's like a case study in cherry-picking statistics.
  - cromulent 11y ago
    Exactly. Here's one I cherry-picked showing the opposite: http://www.degruyter.com/dg/viewarticle/j$002fbejeap.2007.7.1$002fbejeap.2007.7.1.1618$002fbejeap.2007.7.1.1618.xml http://www.degruyter.com/dg/viewarticle/j$002fbejeap.2007.7....
    - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
      Right, so you found a study that shows there are more accidents at the end of winter when the roads are more icy than they are at the start of spring. How about we forget the statistics and stop changing our clocks because people don't like losing an hour of sleep and disrupting their sleep schedule?
      - ghaff 11y ago
        Or keep changing them because people like more light on summer evenings. :-) [EDIT: And I would be perfectly fine with DST year-round but I understand why people in northern cities have issues with an extra hour of morning darkness for kids going to school and people driving to work.]
        AnthonyMouse 11y ago
        You don't have to change your clock for that. Just leave it on DST the whole year.
        raldi 11y ago
        Then you have to get ready for work in the dark from October through March.
        11y ago
shmerl 11y ago
I agree, DST causes more problems than any benefits from it.
- simendsjo 11y ago
  I guess you don't live far up north. All wake hours in total darkness is quite depressing.
  - wtbob 11y 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 11y ago
That's "Saving" time, not "Savings" time.
- rusanu 11y ago
  Article is correct, only the HN title has the s
- blandco 11y ago
  I'm not sure which is worse. DST itself, or the fact that the use of "savings" is so pervasive.
enraged_camel 11y 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 11y 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-saving-time-is-terrible-heres-a-simple-plan-to-fix-it/281075/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/daylight...
  - CiaranMcNulty 11y ago
    Is 'high noon' that important that it needs preserving?
    - minikites 11y ago
      How else when you know when to duel? But seriously, look up how time zones work in China. The whole country is on Beijing time so the western areas essentially maintain two clocks because the "official" clock is so far off the day/night cycle.
- chillaxtian 11y ago
  great article i have seen linked here before: http://qntm.org/abolish http://qntm.org/abolish
  - mitchtbaum 11y 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 11y 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 11y ago
  Educated guess: Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution regarding standards for 'weights and measures'.
- caf 11y 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 11y ago
It's the switch that everyone hates. Instead of ending DST, can we agree to stop using Standard Time?
- chillaxtian 11y ago
  amen
- mws 11y ago
  yes please!
- tempestn 11y 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.
  - anon4 11y ago
    Oh god please no. If that's what you want, go to work one hour earlier. I can't wake up that early.
  - zanny 11y 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.
    - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
legulere 11y 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.
- gaur 11y 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 11y 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.
- BillinghamJ 11y ago
  You could just adapt the time you do things to suit the time of year...
  - imron 11y ago
    If you live alone and only do things by yourself, then sure.
    - BillinghamJ 11y ago
      And yet I have neither of those problems, but somehow still manage to regularly alter the times I do things to suit the current situation.
- scrollaway 11y 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.
manigandham 11y 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.
- gaur 11y 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.
  - chillaxtian 11y ago
    the offset from UTC is arbitrary anyways. it is no more arbitrary to keep it at UTC-7 instead of UTC-8.
    - gaur 11y ago
      > the offset from UTC is arbitrary anyways. It manifestly is not. Noon on the west coast of the continental US happens about 8 hours after noon in the UK. That's why it's nominally UTC-8, not UTC-5 or UTC+12. And regardless of how you define time relative to UTC, a permanent DST is a permanent 1-hour difference between solar noon and clock noon.
      - manigandham 11y ago
        Timezones are for humans, not to align scientifically with actual sun progress. Many would much rather live with the DST offset permanently.
executesorder66 11y ago
Why can't they just leave the time alone, and change their working hours during summer and winter?
- jon-wood 11y 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.
- imron 11y 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.
  - wtbob 11y 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.
- ycmbntrthrwaway 11y 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.
deleted 11y ago
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dheera 11y 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.
anexprogrammer 11y 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 11y 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.
  - anexprogrammer 11y 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.
    - echaozh 11y ago
      China has only 1 timezone, which is based on a city on the east cost. In the west part of the country, the sun always comes up and goes down later than what we east coasters consider as normal. However, they got used to it anyway. Time zones are artificial and don't make it too complicated. Pick a simple solution and let people adjust.
bitwize 11y 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.
- cauterized 11y ago
  Given that evening games are often played under artificial lighting anyway, I don't see what difference it makes in the end.
deleted 11y ago
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beefsack 11y 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 11y ago
  Lol... then everyone would be on one global time? <s>Yeah that sounds super awesome!!!!!!!</s>
  - DanBC 11y 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.
    - sena 11y ago
      Have you heard about UTC?
- ghaff 11y 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 11y 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.
- greggman 11y ago
  Or have massive unintended consequences http://qntm.org/abolish http://qntm.org/abolish
sanqui 11y 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.
weaksauce 11y 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 11y 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).
- ycmbntrthrwaway 11y ago
  Also switch to metric system.
- iso-8859-1 11y ago
  and \n as the universal line ending? http://utf8everywhere.org/#faq.crlf http://utf8everywhere.org/#faq.crlf
- Piskvorrr 11y 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).
- bitwalker 11y 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.
  - Piskvorrr 11y 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."
minikites 11y ago
My favorite counterargument: http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-dst/ 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 11y 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 11y 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.
fsiefken 11y 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-2009.html http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/tunisia-cancels-dst-200...
- runeb 11y ago
  How do you function in relation to other people?
  - fsiefken 11y 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 11y ago
So far I know that Chine made this choose long time ago.
kirian 11y 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-daylight-saving-time-isnt-as-terrible-as-people-think/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/11/why-d...
paulddraper 11y ago
It's Daylight Saving, not Daylight Savings.
xirdstl 11y 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 11y 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.
- cromulent 11y 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.
transfire 11y ago
Split the difference (30 mins) and be done with it. Please.
ianbicking 11y 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.
- fanf2 11y ago
  Clearly DST should be improved to better match the sunrise! http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.10.html#subj1 http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.10.html#subj1
mshenfield 11y 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 11y 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.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB2496 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
mbfg 11y 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.

301 points by pbkhrv 11y 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_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...

terinjokes 11y 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.
- wlesieutre 11y 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 11y 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/wp14-05.pdf http://www.colorado.edu/economics/papers/WPs-14/wp14-05/wp14...
- ghaff 11y 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-vn 11y 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.
- caf 11y 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.
  - dheera 11y ago
    Sure, and going out on a rainy day probably increases your chance of being struck by lightning by 10000%.
  - pille 11y ago
    1.25*(a really tiny risk of a heart attack on a given day) This same numerical trick happened when the WHO classified red meat as a carcinogen "in the same category as" cigarettes, and it was stated that it increased your risk of some cancer by ~50% (or something), but the baseline risk is so low that it's a lot less dramatic than it sounds.
    - aws_ls 11y ago
      This. When I asked a doctor, who was suggesting 'a certain med would reduce chances of some cardio incident by some 10s of percent' (I don't remember, specific details), as to what is the base percent if would be affecting, he sort of evaded the answer.
- mjs7231 11y 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.
caf 11y ago
It's like a case study in cherry-picking statistics.
- cromulent 11y ago
  Exactly. Here's one I cherry-picked showing the opposite: http://www.degruyter.com/dg/viewarticle/j$002fbejeap.2007.7.1$002fbejeap.2007.7.1.1618$002fbejeap.2007.7.1.1618.xml http://www.degruyter.com/dg/viewarticle/j$002fbejeap.2007.7....
  - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
    Right, so you found a study that shows there are more accidents at the end of winter when the roads are more icy than they are at the start of spring. How about we forget the statistics and stop changing our clocks because people don't like losing an hour of sleep and disrupting their sleep schedule?
    - ghaff 11y ago
      Or keep changing them because people like more light on summer evenings. :-) [EDIT: And I would be perfectly fine with DST year-round but I understand why people in northern cities have issues with an extra hour of morning darkness for kids going to school and people driving to work.]
      - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
        You don't have to change your clock for that. Just leave it on DST the whole year.
        raldi 11y ago
        Then you have to get ready for work in the dark from October through March.
        11y ago

shmerl 11y ago

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

simendsjo 11y ago
I guess you don't live far up north. All wake hours in total darkness is quite depressing.
- wtbob 11y 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 11y ago

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

rusanu 11y ago
Article is correct, only the HN title has the s
blandco 11y ago
I'm not sure which is worse. DST itself, or the fact that the use of "savings" is so pervasive.

enraged_camel 11y 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 11y 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-saving-time-is-terrible-heres-a-simple-plan-to-fix-it/281075/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/daylight...
- CiaranMcNulty 11y ago
  Is 'high noon' that important that it needs preserving?
  - minikites 11y ago
    How else when you know when to duel? But seriously, look up how time zones work in China. The whole country is on Beijing time so the western areas essentially maintain two clocks because the "official" clock is so far off the day/night cycle.
chillaxtian 11y ago
great article i have seen linked here before: http://qntm.org/abolish http://qntm.org/abolish
- mitchtbaum 11y 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 11y 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 11y ago
Educated guess: Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution regarding standards for 'weights and measures'.
caf 11y 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 11y ago

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

chillaxtian 11y ago
amen
mws 11y ago
yes please!
tempestn 11y 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.
- anon4 11y ago
  Oh god please no. If that's what you want, go to work one hour earlier. I can't wake up that early.
- zanny 11y 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.
  - AnthonyMouse 11y ago

legulere 11y 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.

gaur 11y 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 11y 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.
BillinghamJ 11y ago
You could just adapt the time you do things to suit the time of year...
- imron 11y ago
  If you live alone and only do things by yourself, then sure.
  - BillinghamJ 11y ago
    And yet I have neither of those problems, but somehow still manage to regularly alter the times I do things to suit the current situation.
scrollaway 11y 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.

manigandham 11y 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.

gaur 11y 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.
- chillaxtian 11y ago
  the offset from UTC is arbitrary anyways. it is no more arbitrary to keep it at UTC-7 instead of UTC-8.
  - gaur 11y ago
    > the offset from UTC is arbitrary anyways. It manifestly is not. Noon on the west coast of the continental US happens about 8 hours after noon in the UK. That's why it's nominally UTC-8, not UTC-5 or UTC+12. And regardless of how you define time relative to UTC, a permanent DST is a permanent 1-hour difference between solar noon and clock noon.
    - manigandham 11y ago
      Timezones are for humans, not to align scientifically with actual sun progress. Many would much rather live with the DST offset permanently.

executesorder66 11y ago

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

jon-wood 11y 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.
imron 11y 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.
- wtbob 11y 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.
ycmbntrthrwaway 11y 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.

deleted 11y ago

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dheera 11y 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.

anexprogrammer 11y 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 11y 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.
- anexprogrammer 11y 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.
  - echaozh 11y ago
    China has only 1 timezone, which is based on a city on the east cost. In the west part of the country, the sun always comes up and goes down later than what we east coasters consider as normal. However, they got used to it anyway. Time zones are artificial and don't make it too complicated. Pick a simple solution and let people adjust.

bitwize 11y 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.

cauterized 11y ago
Given that evening games are often played under artificial lighting anyway, I don't see what difference it makes in the end.

deleted 11y ago

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beefsack 11y 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 11y ago
Lol... then everyone would be on one global time? <s>Yeah that sounds super awesome!!!!!!!</s>
- DanBC 11y 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.
  - sena 11y ago
    Have you heard about UTC?
ghaff 11y 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 11y 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.
greggman 11y ago
Or have massive unintended consequences http://qntm.org/abolish http://qntm.org/abolish

sanqui 11y 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.

weaksauce 11y 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 11y 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).

ycmbntrthrwaway 11y ago
Also switch to metric system.
iso-8859-1 11y ago
and \n as the universal line ending? http://utf8everywhere.org/#faq.crlf http://utf8everywhere.org/#faq.crlf
Piskvorrr 11y 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).
bitwalker 11y 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.
- Piskvorrr 11y 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."

minikites 11y ago

My favorite counterargument: http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-dst/ 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 11y 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 11y 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.

fsiefken 11y 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-2009.html http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/tunisia-cancels-dst-200...

runeb 11y ago
How do you function in relation to other people?
- fsiefken 11y 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 11y ago

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

kirian 11y 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-daylight-saving-time-isnt-as-terrible-as-people-think/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/11/why-d...

paulddraper 11y ago

It's Daylight Saving, not Daylight Savings.

xirdstl 11y 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 11y 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.

cromulent 11y 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.

transfire 11y ago

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

ianbicking 11y 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.

fanf2 11y ago
Clearly DST should be improved to better match the sunrise! http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.10.html#subj1 http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.10.html#subj1

mshenfield 11y 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 11y 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.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB2496 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

mbfg 11y 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.