Don't forget Daylight Savings! (1 Viewer)

[MarcVH]

Personally, I like DST because its beginning means I don't need to carry my heavy bicycle light any more. I wouldn't mind it being year-round but that means a lot of people going to work/school/etc. in the dark, which carries risk. The case for DST is less compelling in the southern portions of the US, of course.

In theory people could readjust their own schedule for daylight hours, but in practice it doesn't happen. If you say "Hey, let's start a league of people who get together after work at 7pm to play soccer!" you'll get lots of interest, while "Hey, let's start a league of people who get together before work at 5am to play soccer!" will get very little.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Anders, Losing/gaining an hour is nothing compared to sailing over the International Date Line. One way you lose an entire day and the other way you have the entire day twice (+/= 1hr).

I can see it in court. "Where were you on April 10th?"
Answer - "I didn't have any April 10th this year!
Or - Which one?

As for exactly what time the sun does come up, this does depend a lot on exactly where you are living relative to the time zones next to you. If you are near one, think about those on the other side.

But, I will continue to argue that DST should be centered around the longest day of the year. If it is possible to find out exactly when the sun does rise where you live, write it down and keep a log for a a year. (I did this once, writing them down twice a month). You'll find out that compared to when DST ends, the start of DST the next year is way off. The end of October - centered around the shortest day of the year ends up about the 10th of February.

See, no one give a crap about what time the sun came up then, right?

That's the fun part - My apologies to any farmers out there.

Glenn

 

[Yee-Ming]

bear in mind that timezones are a completely artificial thing, created by mankind and not by nature (or God). and to make it manageable, there are only 24 timezones, one per hour of the day, rather than, say, 48 zones split by half-hours, or some smaller unit to make "local" time match local conditions more closely. of course there are countries that choose to "straddle" "standard" timezones, most notable example being India.

I say this from personal experience of sorts, Singapore used to be 7.5 hours ahead of GMT, which made for some fancy maths in counting time when listening to the BBC World Service on radio which operates on GMT.

West Malaysia was also 7.5 hours ahead, but East Malaysia was 8 hours ahead. sometime in the early 1980s, Malaysia decided to standardise time for the whole country, for administrative convenience, and they decided to move West Malaysia forward to match the East. Singapore then decided to match West Malaysia, again for convenience given the links between the two.

now we have somewhat strange time (permanently); the sun rises at around 7, but also sets around 7. a bit strange if the concept of sunrise is 6 am or thereabouts. and it gets stranger when you consider that cities like Bangkok and Jakarta are either the same longitude, or further east, than Singapore, yet their time is an hour behind ours, and the sun rises there at 6-ish.

and consider life in China. it's a vast country, maybe as wide east to west as the continental US (or maybe not, but it's still plenty big). for admin reasons, the whole country is on one timezone. makes for screwy timing way out west. to a lesser extent, India as well.

perhaps there is merit to the suggestions as to tweaking when daylight savings is implemented, but the rules have been in place for a long time, and any change might screw things up when people start trying to remember when to "change the clocks".

as a matter of contrast, when do the Europeans change to or from daylight savings? no doubt it's different in different countries (or has the EU bureaucracy standardised that yet?) -- if memory serves the Brits go back to standard on/after 31 October, and move forward on 1 March? (I really should know this, since it affects when I tune in for live football -- soccer to you lot -- matches from England).

 

[Bruce Hedtke]

Plus it is proven that it saves electricity in the U.S. because people use less lights

...and kick on the air-conditioning an hour earlier since it's already sunny and warm out.

Bruce

 

[Max Leung]

Happy Car Accident Day!

Yep, car accidents are (used to?) more frequent on the way where the clocks are moved ahead an hour, because now everyone has one hour less of sleep! You're tired in the morning, or in the evening, and thus have a greater risk of causing an accident.

Now, this may not be true anymore...if there was a time when DST was ever set on any day other than Sunday, I'd bet accidents would be more common because people can't sleep in during the weekdays, so are even more tired. By having DST on Sundays only, you'd minimize the risk because people are usually well rested because of Friday and Saturday over-sleeps.

 

[Yee-Ming]

not quite OT, but sounds slightly like why when Sweden changed from driving on the left to the right side of the road, they did it at 5pm on a weekday. (presumably everybody driving was required to stop still at 5pm, and then inch their cars over to the other side of the road?)

this was rather than changing over in the middle of the night, which would risk sleepy and bleary-eyed people make mistakes first thing the next morning and drive on the now-wrong side of the road.

ah, the wonders of useless information garnered from the Internet! but I wonder why this piece (amongst many many others) stuck in my head?

 

[MarcVH]

It's possible that there are more accidents on the day of the transition, but even so I'd expect that's more than made up for by the fact that there are fewer accidents during the rest of DST interval because it's light out during the time people tend to be out and about.

 

[Michael*K]

Yep, car accidents are (used to?) more frequent on the day where the clocks are moved ahead an hour, because now everyone has one hour less of sleep!

ACTUALLY, there's probably more accidents because people are too busy changing the clock in the car that day than to pay attention to what's going out on the road.

 

[Ryan Wright]

when Sweden changed from driving on the left to the right side of the road

Wow. That would suck. You think it's bad adjusting to daylight savings time, think about trying to adjust to this!

 

[MarkHastings]

When I was in college, I worked in a hospital from 6am - 2pm (on the weekends). When I got in at 6am, the night time nurses (10pm - 6am) would be just leaving...I remember how happy they were during DST because they only had to work 7 hours, but they were MISERABLE in the winter when they had to end up working 9 hours (due to the clocks being put back an hour)... Imagine THAT!