35 ms·

We did this before, about 50 years ago. Going in, close to 80% of people supported permanent Daylight Saving Time. After experiencing a single winter, that dr

We did this before, about 50 years ago. Going in, close to 80% of people supported permanent Daylight Saving Time. After experiencing a single winter, that dropped to close to 40%, and it was repealed. Looks like we may be doomed to repeat the experience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in_the_United_States#Previous_observation_of_year-round_daylight_saving_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in_...

ultimoo 5y ago
No, 50 years ago people had different lifestyles, jobs, and hobbies. Technology as we know it today did not exist. It's a very different world today and the chances of a different outcome are large enough to warrant repeating this.
drekipus 5y ago
Well you know what they say..
- bonniemuffin 5y ago
  "Those who study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it"?
  - thrill 5y ago
    "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."?
thehappypm 5y ago
I don’t get this at all. Why would people want the sun to go down in the afternoon? In my time zone it sets at 4:30 part of the year! That’s awful, and sunrise is at around 7:00am. We have way more sun in the morning.
- D13Fd 5y ago
  Because it make zero sense for everyone to have to get up an hour earlier. And it makes no sense for kids to stand around in the dark at freezing cold bus stops every morning.
  - LastMuel 5y ago
    But, we do that anyway. Mid winter, even in the south part of the U.S. I was standing in the dark and cold waiting for a bus to arrive.
    - sophacles 5y ago
      Stop letting facts get in the way of a good "i dislike change" argument.
      - gifnamething 5y ago
        This isn't a constructive way of arguing, it's an irrefutable strawman
    - D13Fd 5y ago
      There is a big difference between doing it for a few weeks and doing it for most or all of the school year (depending on location and schedule).
    - dham 5y ago
      Same here when I was in middle school. I never understood the standing for bus in the dark argument. I thought that was just normal.
  - belltaco 5y ago
    Change school start timings in winter, then?
    - D13Fd 5y ago
      We'd have to change work timing too, then, to facilitate dropoffs and parents who want to watch their kids at the bus stops. And at that point, we are back where we started. Better to just not mess with the time, and stick with standard time.
throwaway894345 5y ago
I wonder if our interconnected world will make this different. I’m guessing people are more adversely affected by DST than previously. Also from your link: > In the state of Florida alone, at least six school children were killed by motorists due to the dark mornings created by the new law. I wonder how in the world they attributed that to DST?
- stormbrew 5y ago
  Probably by ignoring the 'background noise' of every single after school death that could be attributed to early sunsets.
- FastMonkey 5y ago
  I had the same questions myself. I tried to follow the citation on wikipedia, but that links to a newspaper article that doesn't seem to mention it at all. Edit: on the other hand, the claim "meta-analysis by Rutgers researchers found that Permanent DST would eliminate 171 pedestrian fatalities (a 13% reduction) per year.", does actually link to a paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457503000150?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...
- ThatGeoGuy 5y ago
  North America does seem to like their cars, and is quite hellbent on finding any explanation for deaths caused by automobiles that absolves the system from having to take any responsibility or do anything (e.g. build infrastructure, regulate cars, etc.). Of course, that's not to say that six school children being killed by motorists didn't happen after the time _didn't_ switch, but to pretend that the preceding week or two were materially different in terms of light / dark levels to the degree that driving was significantly more dangerous would mean we have to accept that certain hours at certain times of year are always more dangerous (and we should then enforce more restrictions on when one may drive). If the idea that not switching to driving an hour later causes more dead children sounds preposterous, then DST seems to be a straw-man being propped up. More likely: there was general unhappiness about the change, and people were motivated to find a reason to repeal the law (and cars and bad car-centric planning came in to save the day). It's very easy to take the wind out of a political movement for change, but not necessarily to put them back in. I've been meaning to read Jessie Singer's new book [1], and this seems similar in that regard. Rather than acknowledge that our society has built things (e.g. bad infrastructure) that cause harm (six children died) we instead point at the problem and any attempt to make change anywhere in the system is looked down upon because that would be interacting with the problem, which makes you responsible for any effect of it down the line [2]. Overall, I think my take-away is that we know that shifting the clocks twice a year causes some non-zero amount of suffering (and doesn't have a large justification for _why_). Rather than "Chesterton's fence" ourselves into inaction, we shouldn't let past reasons dictate our choices here. There's surely a lot of overhead with regard to making this change (my heart goes to anyone who has to work with international date / time APIs), but even with knowing that I still don't think it's a bad idea. A unanimous vote by the US Senate surely says that there's some will towards doing this, since it's rare for anything to be this bi-partisan nowadays... [1]: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/There-Are-No-Accidents/Jessie-Singer/9781982129668 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/There-Are-No-Accident... [2]: https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
bin_bash 5y ago
It wasn't repealed. That was a time-limited experiment.
IncRnd 5y ago
Exactly. There has been DST for over 100 years now. We don't use fuel the same way, so the original reason for DST is outdated. From https://www.almanac.com/states-object-changing-clocks-daylight-saving-time https://www.almanac.com/states-object-changing-clocks-daylig... Historically, the changing of clocks was established by law in 1918 as a fuel saving measure during World War I. However, there is a common myth that DST was established to extend the daylight hours for farmers. This is not true. Farmers were extremely opposed to having to turn their clocks forward and back twice a year. Changing hours is actually a disruption for the farmer. Imagine telling a dairy cow accustomed to being milked at 5:00 a.m. that their milking time needs to be moved an hour because the truck is coming to pick up their milk at a different time! For the farmer, plants and animals, it is the sun and seasons which determines their activity. The 1918 law lasted only seven months. It proved unpopular with farmers and other folks. However, after repeal in 1919, some state and localities continued the observance. It took another war, World War II, to introduce a law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, establishing year-round DST. This “War Time” law lasted from February 9, 1942 to September 30, 1945. From 1945 to 1966, observance of DST was quite inconsistent across the states. There were no uniform rules. This caused massive confusion in the transportation and broadcasting industry which pushed for standardization. Farmers continued to oppose it. To address this confusion, permanent DST was introduced by President Lyndon B. Johnson on April 12, 1966 and signed into law as the Uniform Time Act. This established a system of uniformity within each time zone. Daylight saving time was the law throughout the United States and its territories. However, states were allowed to opt out of the law, and some did.
seangrogg 5y ago
All I'm going to say is that - after experiencing about a decade of living in AZ and not worrying about toggling time - I'd still be in that camp that support permanently choosing a time.
- MrMetlHed 5y ago
  I live in Arizona as well, and agree. I'd rather everyone else just pick a time and stick with it. Preferably DST so I can be 3 hours back of the East Coast and get 3 hours at the end of the work day there for solid working while no one else is around. And I like having sporting events on at the end of a work day.
  - seangrogg 5y ago
    Here's to hoping!
- deanCommie 5y ago
  This is key. We can adapt to anything. Just stop making me lose an hour of my sleep once a year. It takes me > 1 week to adjust.
hereforphone 5y ago
Same thing is happening in Turkey now. Everyone gets depressed when it's dark outside when they wake up, every day of the year.
paxys 5y ago
You conveniently skipped the last line of that paragraph > However, critics argue that anecdotes of deaths in the dark could be equally applied to darker evenings, and that the elimination of Permanent DST was politically motivated.
- aiisjustanif 5y ago
  Children deaths tend to be more significant in the eyes of the voting population, tbf.
  - paxys 5y ago
    The point is that there may have been an equal number of children saved from death due to more light in the evenings, but you can't really prove that.
whacim 5y ago
I think they should just make a one time half-hour adjustment and split the difference. Not sure how much of a technical challenge that would present to implement.
- SllX 5y ago
  Well, as far as technical challenges go, we would all have to change our clocks (or the clocks would have to receive some kind of signal to adjust their time accordingly). Might be doable though.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Looks like we may be doomed to repeat the experience Based on what? The fact that we're trying again? If we all walk into this assuming it's doomed because it didn't work 50 years ago, sure, it will be, but that's how one doesn't get nice things.
subsubzero 5y ago
Its so strange how people on this thread are complaining about the issues you mentioned, but twice every year I see articles on hackernews/other areas about how bad the effects of changing time to DST and back and how detrimental it is for everyone's health. People can't have it both ways. My gut suspicion is why this passed is people are more angrier and stressed out/depressed than they have been in a very long time and its an appeasement so they don't take their anger out at the polls come November, that and it is an easy thing to change that requires next to no stimulus. I expect more of these appeasement bills to start passing as gas heads to the moon along with inflation.
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  I see it too (work to elect Dems). Especially if gas is over $5 past august. Seeing signs it will cool down though? Subsidizing gas seems like obvious on paper but fraught with problems especially with inflation (and opposite of what's needed for climate change). Would love to see federal legalization, or at least decriminalization of marijuana. IDK if only decriminalization would hold up with reconciliation but I think regulating it legalized commerce would. And sad to say but assuming Roe is gutted/thrown to the states that could galvanize turnout on both sides, hopefully to our benefit. We'll see what games are played with Jackson's nomination too
  - exolymph 5y ago
    Lol at the idea that electing Democrats will help with gas prices. Come to Cali and see how that works in practice.
    - alx__ 5y ago
      Gas prices are higher in California due to multiple taxes being added to the base price
      - Brybry 5y ago
        Isn't California gasoline generally more expensive because it requires a more stringent formulation of gasoline and so only a handful of refineries produce that?[1][2] I imagine if the whole country used the California standard then gas prices in California would go down. I don't know how much it would go up in the rest of the country though. Really we should just ditch gas. The political drama from the last 50+ years over oil alone seems like a no-brainer for anything but gasoline, even if it costs more. [1] https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/gasoline/about https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/gasoline/about [2] https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article259190893.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article259190893.html
rossjudson 5y ago
Ah! The difference is that in today's political climate, nobody will admit they were wrong about anything. So it will probably stick.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Asooka 5y ago
I've always hated how DST makes me get up too early. Even after getting over the initial shock, it never felt right. Hope the USA will do the right thing eventually.
jeffchien 5y ago
The UK tried it from 1968 to 1971 as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Summer_Time#Periods_of_deviation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Summer_Time#Periods_... But as others have said, Arizona (sans some reservations and jurisdictions) have been fine so maybe history won't repeat itself. And of course there are plenty of countries worldwide that don't have DST anyways.
Brybry 5y ago
50 years ago we didn't have the internet and everyone plugged into phones/TVs/inside all the time. There's no reason we have to follow the same pattern this time around.
ishjoh 5y ago
Thank you for this link. I guess we really are doomed to repeat history.

ultimoo 5y ago

No, 50 years ago people had different lifestyles, jobs, and hobbies. Technology as we know it today did not exist. It's a very different world today and the chances of a different outcome are large enough to warrant repeating this.

drekipus 5y ago

Well you know what they say..

bonniemuffin 5y ago
"Those who study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it"?
- thrill 5y ago
  "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."?

thehappypm 5y ago

I don’t get this at all. Why would people want the sun to go down in the afternoon? In my time zone it sets at 4:30 part of the year! That’s awful, and sunrise is at around 7:00am. We have way more sun in the morning.

D13Fd 5y ago
Because it make zero sense for everyone to have to get up an hour earlier. And it makes no sense for kids to stand around in the dark at freezing cold bus stops every morning.
- LastMuel 5y ago
  But, we do that anyway. Mid winter, even in the south part of the U.S. I was standing in the dark and cold waiting for a bus to arrive.
  - sophacles 5y ago
    Stop letting facts get in the way of a good "i dislike change" argument.
    - gifnamething 5y ago
      This isn't a constructive way of arguing, it's an irrefutable strawman
  - D13Fd 5y ago
    There is a big difference between doing it for a few weeks and doing it for most or all of the school year (depending on location and schedule).
  - dham 5y ago
    Same here when I was in middle school. I never understood the standing for bus in the dark argument. I thought that was just normal.
- belltaco 5y ago
  Change school start timings in winter, then?
  - D13Fd 5y ago
    We'd have to change work timing too, then, to facilitate dropoffs and parents who want to watch their kids at the bus stops. And at that point, we are back where we started. Better to just not mess with the time, and stick with standard time.

throwaway894345 5y ago

I wonder if our interconnected world will make this different. I’m guessing people are more adversely affected by DST than previously. Also from your link: > In the state of Florida alone, at least six school children were killed by motorists due to the dark mornings created by the new law. I wonder how in the world they attributed that to DST?

stormbrew 5y ago
Probably by ignoring the 'background noise' of every single after school death that could be attributed to early sunsets.
FastMonkey 5y ago
I had the same questions myself. I tried to follow the citation on wikipedia, but that links to a newspaper article that doesn't seem to mention it at all. Edit: on the other hand, the claim "meta-analysis by Rutgers researchers found that Permanent DST would eliminate 171 pedestrian fatalities (a 13% reduction) per year.", does actually link to a paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457503000150?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...
ThatGeoGuy 5y ago
North America does seem to like their cars, and is quite hellbent on finding any explanation for deaths caused by automobiles that absolves the system from having to take any responsibility or do anything (e.g. build infrastructure, regulate cars, etc.). Of course, that's not to say that six school children being killed by motorists didn't happen after the time _didn't_ switch, but to pretend that the preceding week or two were materially different in terms of light / dark levels to the degree that driving was significantly more dangerous would mean we have to accept that certain hours at certain times of year are always more dangerous (and we should then enforce more restrictions on when one may drive). If the idea that not switching to driving an hour later causes more dead children sounds preposterous, then DST seems to be a straw-man being propped up. More likely: there was general unhappiness about the change, and people were motivated to find a reason to repeal the law (and cars and bad car-centric planning came in to save the day). It's very easy to take the wind out of a political movement for change, but not necessarily to put them back in. I've been meaning to read Jessie Singer's new book [1], and this seems similar in that regard. Rather than acknowledge that our society has built things (e.g. bad infrastructure) that cause harm (six children died) we instead point at the problem and any attempt to make change anywhere in the system is looked down upon because that would be interacting with the problem, which makes you responsible for any effect of it down the line [2]. Overall, I think my take-away is that we know that shifting the clocks twice a year causes some non-zero amount of suffering (and doesn't have a large justification for _why_). Rather than "Chesterton's fence" ourselves into inaction, we shouldn't let past reasons dictate our choices here. There's surely a lot of overhead with regard to making this change (my heart goes to anyone who has to work with international date / time APIs), but even with knowing that I still don't think it's a bad idea. A unanimous vote by the US Senate surely says that there's some will towards doing this, since it's rare for anything to be this bi-partisan nowadays... [1]: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/There-Are-No-Accidents/Jessie-Singer/9781982129668 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/There-Are-No-Accident... [2]: https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

bin_bash 5y ago

It wasn't repealed. That was a time-limited experiment.

IncRnd 5y ago

Exactly. There has been DST for over 100 years now. We don't use fuel the same way, so the original reason for DST is outdated. From https://www.almanac.com/states-object-changing-clocks-daylight-saving-time https://www.almanac.com/states-object-changing-clocks-daylig... Historically, the changing of clocks was established by law in 1918 as a fuel saving measure during World War I. However, there is a common myth that DST was established to extend the daylight hours for farmers. This is not true. Farmers were extremely opposed to having to turn their clocks forward and back twice a year. Changing hours is actually a disruption for the farmer. Imagine telling a dairy cow accustomed to being milked at 5:00 a.m. that their milking time needs to be moved an hour because the truck is coming to pick up their milk at a different time! For the farmer, plants and animals, it is the sun and seasons which determines their activity. The 1918 law lasted only seven months. It proved unpopular with farmers and other folks. However, after repeal in 1919, some state and localities continued the observance. It took another war, World War II, to introduce a law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, establishing year-round DST. This “War Time” law lasted from February 9, 1942 to September 30, 1945. From 1945 to 1966, observance of DST was quite inconsistent across the states. There were no uniform rules. This caused massive confusion in the transportation and broadcasting industry which pushed for standardization. Farmers continued to oppose it. To address this confusion, permanent DST was introduced by President Lyndon B. Johnson on April 12, 1966 and signed into law as the Uniform Time Act. This established a system of uniformity within each time zone. Daylight saving time was the law throughout the United States and its territories. However, states were allowed to opt out of the law, and some did.

seangrogg 5y ago

All I'm going to say is that - after experiencing about a decade of living in AZ and not worrying about toggling time - I'd still be in that camp that support permanently choosing a time.

MrMetlHed 5y ago
I live in Arizona as well, and agree. I'd rather everyone else just pick a time and stick with it. Preferably DST so I can be 3 hours back of the East Coast and get 3 hours at the end of the work day there for solid working while no one else is around. And I like having sporting events on at the end of a work day.
- seangrogg 5y ago
  Here's to hoping!
deanCommie 5y ago
This is key. We can adapt to anything. Just stop making me lose an hour of my sleep once a year. It takes me > 1 week to adjust.

hereforphone 5y ago

Same thing is happening in Turkey now. Everyone gets depressed when it's dark outside when they wake up, every day of the year.

paxys 5y ago

You conveniently skipped the last line of that paragraph > However, critics argue that anecdotes of deaths in the dark could be equally applied to darker evenings, and that the elimination of Permanent DST was politically motivated.

aiisjustanif 5y ago
Children deaths tend to be more significant in the eyes of the voting population, tbf.
- paxys 5y ago
  The point is that there may have been an equal number of children saved from death due to more light in the evenings, but you can't really prove that.

whacim 5y ago

I think they should just make a one time half-hour adjustment and split the difference. Not sure how much of a technical challenge that would present to implement.

SllX 5y ago
Well, as far as technical challenges go, we would all have to change our clocks (or the clocks would have to receive some kind of signal to adjust their time accordingly). Might be doable though.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> Looks like we may be doomed to repeat the experience Based on what? The fact that we're trying again? If we all walk into this assuming it's doomed because it didn't work 50 years ago, sure, it will be, but that's how one doesn't get nice things.

subsubzero 5y ago

Its so strange how people on this thread are complaining about the issues you mentioned, but twice every year I see articles on hackernews/other areas about how bad the effects of changing time to DST and back and how detrimental it is for everyone's health. People can't have it both ways. My gut suspicion is why this passed is people are more angrier and stressed out/depressed than they have been in a very long time and its an appeasement so they don't take their anger out at the polls come November, that and it is an easy thing to change that requires next to no stimulus. I expect more of these appeasement bills to start passing as gas heads to the moon along with inflation.

dillondoyle 5y ago
I see it too (work to elect Dems). Especially if gas is over $5 past august. Seeing signs it will cool down though? Subsidizing gas seems like obvious on paper but fraught with problems especially with inflation (and opposite of what's needed for climate change). Would love to see federal legalization, or at least decriminalization of marijuana. IDK if only decriminalization would hold up with reconciliation but I think regulating it legalized commerce would. And sad to say but assuming Roe is gutted/thrown to the states that could galvanize turnout on both sides, hopefully to our benefit. We'll see what games are played with Jackson's nomination too
- exolymph 5y ago
  Lol at the idea that electing Democrats will help with gas prices. Come to Cali and see how that works in practice.
  - alx__ 5y ago
    Gas prices are higher in California due to multiple taxes being added to the base price
    - Brybry 5y ago
      Isn't California gasoline generally more expensive because it requires a more stringent formulation of gasoline and so only a handful of refineries produce that?[1][2] I imagine if the whole country used the California standard then gas prices in California would go down. I don't know how much it would go up in the rest of the country though. Really we should just ditch gas. The political drama from the last 50+ years over oil alone seems like a no-brainer for anything but gasoline, even if it costs more. [1] https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/gasoline/about https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/gasoline/about [2] https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article259190893.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article259190893.html

rossjudson 5y ago

Ah! The difference is that in today's political climate, nobody will admit they were wrong about anything. So it will probably stick.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Asooka 5y ago

I've always hated how DST makes me get up too early. Even after getting over the initial shock, it never felt right. Hope the USA will do the right thing eventually.

jeffchien 5y ago

The UK tried it from 1968 to 1971 as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Summer_Time#Periods_of_deviation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Summer_Time#Periods_... But as others have said, Arizona (sans some reservations and jurisdictions) have been fine so maybe history won't repeat itself. And of course there are plenty of countries worldwide that don't have DST anyways.

Brybry 5y ago

50 years ago we didn't have the internet and everyone plugged into phones/TVs/inside all the time. There's no reason we have to follow the same pattern this time around.

ishjoh 5y ago

Thank you for this link. I guess we really are doomed to repeat history.