9 ms·

> Critics however claim that if adopted all year round, this would result in darker winter mornings which would be more dangerous for children going to school

by lisper 6y ago

> Critics however claim that if adopted all year round, this would result in darker winter mornings which would be more dangerous for children going to school This drives me bananas. If you're worried about this, the right answer is not to force everyone to change their clocks, it's to change the school schedule to start an hour later.

Pxtl 6y ago
Besides that, this hypothetical can be tested. Saskatoon is far north, and they do not do DST timechange. Meanwhile, Red Deer Alberta is a similar climate and latitude, but does DST. So if people are concerned, winter morning accident rates in Saskatchewan could be compared.
tptacek 6y ago
The opposing case is stronger: you can't just change the school schedule, because school is part of the fabric of child care; change its schedule, and you change the schedules of parents, which means now you have a coordination problem. That problem ripples, so that by the time you've really addressed it, you've essentially recapitulated daylight savings time. Accidents aside, there's a lot to be said for not having the first 45 minutes of the school day take place in the dark in places like western Michigan, or for having sunrise occur 3-4 hours before people normally wake up in the summer. Josh Barro is fond of pointing out that this --- eliminating DST --- was tried in the early 1970s, and the 2-year experiment was so universally reviled in practice that it was repealed almost unanimously in Congress just 9 months later.
- chillwaves 6y ago
  Let the children start later. Let the parents start later and have a shorter work day. Problem solved.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    A huge fraction of the US workforce, spread throughout every industry, consists of parents. It sounds easy to say "let the parents start later", but it's a massive coordination problem. It makes more sense if you assume the whole workforce works the way it does for most of us on HN, but in most jobs, you actually have to show up on time; if you can't, someone else has to be scheduled to account for your missing hour. The only way I think you can make DST abolition make sense is if you say "well, I guess kids are going to be at school in the dark at 9AM in a bunch of places around the country". That's a coherent argument! But "parents and workplaces will just figure it out" is, I think, not.
  - watwut 6y ago
    > Let the children start later. Let the parents start later and have a shorter work day. Problem solved. What would actually happened would that that women and some guys would be penalized in the workplace and ... that would be it.
- pxeboot 6y ago
  It's not like we have a national school schedule. There are already 1-2 hour differences in school start times, sometimes just a few miles away.
  - wyattpeak 6y ago
    The issue isn't universality but consistency. It doesn't matter to person A how person B gets their kids to school, what matters is that person A doesn't need a different system for half the year.
    - Rule35 6y ago
      So everyone in the world changing their clocks is easier than having a summer schedule at a business where they open one hour earlier? Many businesses have different schedules on the weekend, I think people could cope with summer hours. Especially since they already do - even with the time change many businesses are open longer. For something so unpopular, how do places that don't do the time change get by? Why isn't Saskatchewan in a permanent rage-fueled civil war?
      - tptacek 6y ago
        So everyone in the world changing their clocks is easier than having a summer schedule at a business where they open one hour earlier? Yes.
        Rule35 6y ago
        No. My local swimming pool disagrees. Saskatchewan disagrees.
- TylerE 6y ago
  Hawaii and Arizona have done without the time change for over 50 years.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Where do most people in AZ live relative to their time zone? I wonder how apparent these issues are to people in DC; they're very apparent in places like Michigan, on the edge of their time zone; you drive for an hour outside of Chicago and it's weird how long the sun is suddenly up.
    - TylerE 6y ago
      The state pretty much spans the width of mountain time. It's pretty large geographically, almost 350 miles across.
  - stopping 6y ago
    AZ and Hawaii experience ranges of [10-14 hours] and [11-13.5 hours] of daylight across the whole year, respectively. More southern latitudes can get away with not shifting their clocks because the daylight variance is much smaller. In AZ, sunrise varies from 5:15AM to 7:25AM. In Seattle, without DST, it would range from 4:11AM to 7:57AM. If we use "civil twilight" (bright enough for outdoor activities), Seattle would start experiencing daylight at 3:30AM in mid-summer.
    - _Microft 6y ago
      Here is a reference point for Europeans: Seattle is at the same latitude as the southern border of Germany.
    - toast0 6y ago
      Having 16 hours of sunlight in the summer means the sun is going to be up too early. Both 3:30 am and 4:30 am are way too early for the sun, but such is life. Either way, the sun is up well into the evening, so it's not as if much changed with an hour moved. Except the sleep disturbance; for some, it's no big deal; for others it takes weeks to recover.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  > there's a lot to be said for not having the first 45 minutes of the school day take place in the dark Is there? There's something to be said for the walk to school, for those that actually walk. And there's also something to be said for having sunlight while waking up, with the huge caveat that the current DST system does not accomplish this. But once they're at school? Why does it matter if it's dark outside during first period?
Philadelphia 6y ago
Article on the many medical downsides of permanent Daylight Savings Time https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/10/30/marco-rubios-time-machine-and-why-its-wrong-for-america/ https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/10/30/marco-rubios-time-m...
- strbean 6y ago
  That articles take the mountains of evidence that changing schedules is terrible for our health, and misrepresents it as evidence that switching to permanent DST would be bad for our health. There are tons of terrible norms in our schedules that are harmful for people's health, but switching the clock around twice a year simply confounds and complicates any attempts to fix them. For example: > To counter chronic sleep deprivation in students, many schools have delayed their morning start times—in effect, moving the school clock back. But DST negates this move for five months of the school year. Year-round DST would negate it all year. If we switched to permanent DST, high-schools could just push start times back one more hour, and students could consistently get the benefit year-round.
  - Philadelphia 6y ago
    As the article makes very clear, the problem isn’t the change, but DST not aligning with circadian rhythms. DST is fundamentally hostile to human health. The entire second half of the article, starting just before the section labeled “Time Out of Time,” goes into the science on this. Conclusions: “‘It’s not one hour twice a year. It’s a misalignment of our biologic clocks for eight months of the year,’ says Beth Ann Malow, professor of neurology and pediatrics at Vanderbilt University.” “The American Academy of Sleep Medicine published a position statement on the subject in October. ‘Permanent, year-round standard time is the best choice to most closely match our circadian sleep-wake cycle,’ said lead author M. Adeel Rishi, a specialist at the Mayo Clinic.”
    - dahart 6y ago
      > It’s a misalignment of our biological clocks for eight months of the year Hahaha, that’s not a thing. First of all, entrainment happens in a matter of days (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrainment_(chronobiology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrainment_(chronobiology)). This is why you can move across the country, or just fly to Europe for a vacation, and be on the new schedule after just a few nights there. Nobody has jet lag for eight months when flying to the other side of the planet twelve time zones away. The idea that a one hour shift stays with you forever is just hyperbole, don’t fall for it. It’s also silly to say you’re out of sync for the longer duration of the year. You spend more time there, so if being out of sync for months at a time was a thing (and it’s not) then it would be out of sync for four months, not eight, because the longer duration is the baseline because it’s longer. Our biological clocks and circadian rhythms are driven by light. We’d be rising with the sun if it weren’t for all our iPads and streetlights and other artificial light. The changes to and from DST put us closer to rising with the sun. It’s a blunt tool, however staying on the same time all year would be further away, causing a larger misalignment. Anyway, many people’s typical weekly bedtimes and wake up times varies by more than 1 hour. There’s a term called “social jet lag” which is the discrepancy between your weekend sleep patterns and your mid-week work sleep patterns. It’s pretty common for that to be two or three hours. The effect of DST one hour twice a year is relatively in the noise.
eej71 6y ago
I can understand that perspective, but for many families work and school schedules become synchronized. Introducing a one hour shift for some parts of the year becomes very challenging especially for families where both parents work. For some, the schedule ceases to work.
- Thorrez 6y ago
  >a one hour shift for some parts of the year becomes very challenging lisper's comment is ambiguous, but this is not how I interpreted it. I interpreted lisper as saying schools should start 1 hour later year round, compared to today.
Thorrez 6y ago
It's not just kids starting in the dark, it's everyone. Why don't we simply move everything later? Boom, that's permanent standard time, which means an hour less light in the evening.
tom_mellior 6y ago
Also, if you're worried about dangerous drivers, do something about dangerous drivers rather than toying with clocks.
theshrike79 6y ago
Or get the kids a damn flashlight. Up here near the arctic circle, we don't get stuff like "sunrise" and "sunset" for a good part of the year. It's just dark and less dark. Kids walk/bike to school just fine.
- thraway123412 6y ago
  Yep.. it's crazy how muricans seem to think everything has to be scheduled around taking and picking up kids to/from school. Around where I live, kids take themselves to school or use a bus. School can start any time between 8:00 and 10:00, sometimes even later. School can end any time between 12:00 and 16:00. Parents don't need to schedule their work and life around it.
- 8fingerlouie 6y ago
  > It's just dark and less dark. With summers being bright and less bright :)

by lisper 6y ago

Pxtl 6y ago

Besides that, this hypothetical can be tested. Saskatoon is far north, and they do not do DST timechange. Meanwhile, Red Deer Alberta is a similar climate and latitude, but does DST. So if people are concerned, winter morning accident rates in Saskatchewan could be compared.

tptacek 6y ago

The opposing case is stronger: you can't just change the school schedule, because school is part of the fabric of child care; change its schedule, and you change the schedules of parents, which means now you have a coordination problem. That problem ripples, so that by the time you've really addressed it, you've essentially recapitulated daylight savings time. Accidents aside, there's a lot to be said for not having the first 45 minutes of the school day take place in the dark in places like western Michigan, or for having sunrise occur 3-4 hours before people normally wake up in the summer. Josh Barro is fond of pointing out that this --- eliminating DST --- was tried in the early 1970s, and the 2-year experiment was so universally reviled in practice that it was repealed almost unanimously in Congress just 9 months later.

chillwaves 6y ago
Let the children start later. Let the parents start later and have a shorter work day. Problem solved.
- tptacek 6y ago
  A huge fraction of the US workforce, spread throughout every industry, consists of parents. It sounds easy to say "let the parents start later", but it's a massive coordination problem. It makes more sense if you assume the whole workforce works the way it does for most of us on HN, but in most jobs, you actually have to show up on time; if you can't, someone else has to be scheduled to account for your missing hour. The only way I think you can make DST abolition make sense is if you say "well, I guess kids are going to be at school in the dark at 9AM in a bunch of places around the country". That's a coherent argument! But "parents and workplaces will just figure it out" is, I think, not.
- watwut 6y ago
  > Let the children start later. Let the parents start later and have a shorter work day. Problem solved. What would actually happened would that that women and some guys would be penalized in the workplace and ... that would be it.
pxeboot 6y ago
It's not like we have a national school schedule. There are already 1-2 hour differences in school start times, sometimes just a few miles away.
- wyattpeak 6y ago
  The issue isn't universality but consistency. It doesn't matter to person A how person B gets their kids to school, what matters is that person A doesn't need a different system for half the year.
  - Rule35 6y ago
    So everyone in the world changing their clocks is easier than having a summer schedule at a business where they open one hour earlier? Many businesses have different schedules on the weekend, I think people could cope with summer hours. Especially since they already do - even with the time change many businesses are open longer. For something so unpopular, how do places that don't do the time change get by? Why isn't Saskatchewan in a permanent rage-fueled civil war?
    - tptacek 6y ago
      So everyone in the world changing their clocks is easier than having a summer schedule at a business where they open one hour earlier? Yes.
      - Rule35 6y ago
        No. My local swimming pool disagrees. Saskatchewan disagrees.
TylerE 6y ago
Hawaii and Arizona have done without the time change for over 50 years.
- tptacek 6y ago
  Where do most people in AZ live relative to their time zone? I wonder how apparent these issues are to people in DC; they're very apparent in places like Michigan, on the edge of their time zone; you drive for an hour outside of Chicago and it's weird how long the sun is suddenly up.
  - TylerE 6y ago
    The state pretty much spans the width of mountain time. It's pretty large geographically, almost 350 miles across.
- stopping 6y ago
  AZ and Hawaii experience ranges of [10-14 hours] and [11-13.5 hours] of daylight across the whole year, respectively. More southern latitudes can get away with not shifting their clocks because the daylight variance is much smaller. In AZ, sunrise varies from 5:15AM to 7:25AM. In Seattle, without DST, it would range from 4:11AM to 7:57AM. If we use "civil twilight" (bright enough for outdoor activities), Seattle would start experiencing daylight at 3:30AM in mid-summer.
  - _Microft 6y ago
    Here is a reference point for Europeans: Seattle is at the same latitude as the southern border of Germany.
  - toast0 6y ago
    Having 16 hours of sunlight in the summer means the sun is going to be up too early. Both 3:30 am and 4:30 am are way too early for the sun, but such is life. Either way, the sun is up well into the evening, so it's not as if much changed with an hour moved. Except the sleep disturbance; for some, it's no big deal; for others it takes weeks to recover.
Dylan16807 6y ago
> there's a lot to be said for not having the first 45 minutes of the school day take place in the dark Is there? There's something to be said for the walk to school, for those that actually walk. And there's also something to be said for having sunlight while waking up, with the huge caveat that the current DST system does not accomplish this. But once they're at school? Why does it matter if it's dark outside during first period?

Philadelphia 6y ago

Article on the many medical downsides of permanent Daylight Savings Time https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/10/30/marco-rubios-time-machine-and-why-its-wrong-for-america/ https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/10/30/marco-rubios-time-m...

strbean 6y ago
That articles take the mountains of evidence that changing schedules is terrible for our health, and misrepresents it as evidence that switching to permanent DST would be bad for our health. There are tons of terrible norms in our schedules that are harmful for people's health, but switching the clock around twice a year simply confounds and complicates any attempts to fix them. For example: > To counter chronic sleep deprivation in students, many schools have delayed their morning start times—in effect, moving the school clock back. But DST negates this move for five months of the school year. Year-round DST would negate it all year. If we switched to permanent DST, high-schools could just push start times back one more hour, and students could consistently get the benefit year-round.
- Philadelphia 6y ago
  As the article makes very clear, the problem isn’t the change, but DST not aligning with circadian rhythms. DST is fundamentally hostile to human health. The entire second half of the article, starting just before the section labeled “Time Out of Time,” goes into the science on this. Conclusions: “‘It’s not one hour twice a year. It’s a misalignment of our biologic clocks for eight months of the year,’ says Beth Ann Malow, professor of neurology and pediatrics at Vanderbilt University.” “The American Academy of Sleep Medicine published a position statement on the subject in October. ‘Permanent, year-round standard time is the best choice to most closely match our circadian sleep-wake cycle,’ said lead author M. Adeel Rishi, a specialist at the Mayo Clinic.”
  - dahart 6y ago
    > It’s a misalignment of our biological clocks for eight months of the year Hahaha, that’s not a thing. First of all, entrainment happens in a matter of days (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrainment_(chronobiology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrainment_(chronobiology)). This is why you can move across the country, or just fly to Europe for a vacation, and be on the new schedule after just a few nights there. Nobody has jet lag for eight months when flying to the other side of the planet twelve time zones away. The idea that a one hour shift stays with you forever is just hyperbole, don’t fall for it. It’s also silly to say you’re out of sync for the longer duration of the year. You spend more time there, so if being out of sync for months at a time was a thing (and it’s not) then it would be out of sync for four months, not eight, because the longer duration is the baseline because it’s longer. Our biological clocks and circadian rhythms are driven by light. We’d be rising with the sun if it weren’t for all our iPads and streetlights and other artificial light. The changes to and from DST put us closer to rising with the sun. It’s a blunt tool, however staying on the same time all year would be further away, causing a larger misalignment. Anyway, many people’s typical weekly bedtimes and wake up times varies by more than 1 hour. There’s a term called “social jet lag” which is the discrepancy between your weekend sleep patterns and your mid-week work sleep patterns. It’s pretty common for that to be two or three hours. The effect of DST one hour twice a year is relatively in the noise.

eej71 6y ago

I can understand that perspective, but for many families work and school schedules become synchronized. Introducing a one hour shift for some parts of the year becomes very challenging especially for families where both parents work. For some, the schedule ceases to work.

Thorrez 6y ago
>a one hour shift for some parts of the year becomes very challenging lisper's comment is ambiguous, but this is not how I interpreted it. I interpreted lisper as saying schools should start 1 hour later year round, compared to today.

Thorrez 6y ago

It's not just kids starting in the dark, it's everyone. Why don't we simply move everything later? Boom, that's permanent standard time, which means an hour less light in the evening.

tom_mellior 6y ago

Also, if you're worried about dangerous drivers, do something about dangerous drivers rather than toying with clocks.

theshrike79 6y ago

Or get the kids a damn flashlight. Up here near the arctic circle, we don't get stuff like "sunrise" and "sunset" for a good part of the year. It's just dark and less dark. Kids walk/bike to school just fine.

thraway123412 6y ago
Yep.. it's crazy how muricans seem to think everything has to be scheduled around taking and picking up kids to/from school. Around where I live, kids take themselves to school or use a bus. School can start any time between 8:00 and 10:00, sometimes even later. School can end any time between 12:00 and 16:00. Parents don't need to schedule their work and life around it.
8fingerlouie 6y ago
> It's just dark and less dark. With summers being bright and less bright :)