5 ms·
There are definitely measurable population-level effects, like increased traffic accidents [1] and heart attacks [2]. And given that its purported benefits are
by transcranial 10y ago
There are definitely measurable population-level effects, like increased traffic accidents [1] and heart attacks [2]. And given that its purported benefits are completely unsubstantiated, it's amazing that DST still exists.
[1] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20140100 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20140100
[2] http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc0807104 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc0807104
- weaksauce 10y agoI wish we would all go on DST and be done with it forever. The extra hour of usable daylight after work is a net win for societies mental health. We have farming machines that do the heavy lifting and are mostly automated now anyway. Unlike when it was enacted, there simply are much fewer farmers.
- joecool1029 10y agoThink of the children!!! EDIT: I should clarify that this is nearly always the argument brought up against year round DST, so that children during winter go to school with sunlight in the morning.
- mjevans 10y agoYes, let's think of the children, and let them get the sleep that they need. (I am not a morning person, and really should have had much more sleep after local sunrise.)
- weaksauce 10y agoShift their school cycle to be more in line with the sun.
- petecox 10y agoSpain has this issue. It is in the wrong timezone, which the government changed in the 1940s. Consequently it stays light until 6:30pm in winter. In mountainous regions such as Picos de Europa, towns in the valleys do have kids catching schoolbuses in near darkness at 8:30am. As a traveller I found the experience surreal. Although, we put the clocks forward an hour leading up to the 2000 Olympics so construction workers could work longer.
- danieltillett 10y agoThe 2000 Olympics where held in Sydney :)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- lucaspiller 10y agoExcept that also depends on your latitude... Here at 57N it's dark until 9pm on Dec/Jan, currently the sun rises at 7am, and in the summer it's only dark for a couple of hours at night. Even with all-round DST it'll still be dark when children go to school in winter.
- douche 10y agoI'd rather have the hour of daylight in the morning, so why not just stay on standard time? I'd also much rather work 7-3 than 9-5.
- mycall 10y agoI would prefer 7-5 and only work 4 days a week.
- khedoros1 10y agoAnd I'd rather work 10-6...but I'd be happy either way, if we just did away with the time shift.
- anigbrowl 10y agoWhat's stopping you working those hours now? I'm not a morning person so when I had jobs I would have to fight to start at some (to me) civilized hour like 10, but I don't mind working late. I had the impression that early birds had a much easier time of it since nobody is ever accused of being lazy for wanting to start work at 7am.
- douche 10y agoThere's no problem with coming in at 7. It's the leaving at 3 after you've put in your eight hours that tends to be the sticky wicket.
- bnjms 10y agoI will never understand this argument. Noon should be when the sun is roughly directly overhead. And there will be no increase in daylight compared to businesses adjusting working hours to open an hour earlier.
- outside1234 10y agoI never understand why people care what number it is on a wall when the sun is anywhere. I go even further with this and say the whole world should be on the same clock. Who cares if it says 03:00 when you eat dinner or 17:00 when you eat breakfast - and think how much easier it will be to plan anything that spans timezones!
- Houshalter 10y agoBecause people's daily cycles are tied to the orbit of the sun. It's nice to have a measurement of that. With our current system, noon is the middle of the day. So 12 feels like a nice time to schedule lunch. And 6 feels like a nice time to have dinner. And if you say something is happening at 10, I know it will be dark. If you say you were up at 3 am, I know that was very late, no matter where on the Earth you are referring to. I don't need to adjust my sense of time whenever I change timezones. 12 is always roughly the middle of the day no matter where you are. I don't want to like DST because it seems so inelegant. But it does give people an extra hour of sunlight. And I think that is a very desirable thing. There are a lot of mental health benefits associated with outdoor activities and exposure to sunlight. I have personally noticed my mood is very affected by the weather and whether I'm in sunlight.
- forgottenpass 10y agothink how much easier it will be to plan anything that spans timezones Unless you expect all the Auzzies to move to the night shift, it just becomes more of a pain in the ass. You still have to line the phase of the day and timezones help simplify that by doing the work upfront. You could switch to only using UTC outright for all your planning today. But even if you do, you'll find there is still a translation step of figuring out that business hours at location X are Y-Z UTC. Timezones make juggling the offsets easier, and also give you a stronger ability to roughly predict someone's schedule (like what time the business day starts, or not planning something during their lunch) just based on geography.
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- anigbrowl 10y agoPerhaps mentally ill people should sue for its removal on the basis that we don't want to carry the can for whatever non-actual benefits are ascribed to DST.