Stop Using the Daylight Savings Time

Maybe it&#x27;s just me, but the way these statistics are worded is setting off my skepticism alarms:<p>&gt; Between 1986 and 1995, fatal traffic accidents rose 17% the Monday following the switch to Daylight Saving Time.<p>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.<p>For all this page says, accidents were up 17% <i>every</i> day of the year over that decade.<p>EDIT: Wikipedia says total US traffic deaths were lower in 1995 than 1986, so I&#x27;ll chalk this up as poor wording. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...</a>

All these articles seem to keep gloss over the actual issue: the <i>switch</i> between standard time and DST twice a year.<p>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.

It&#x27;s the switch that everyone hates. Instead of ending DST, can we agree to stop using Standard Time?

Both sides of the Atlantic these sort of articles crop up regularly. Move to summer time year round and so forth.<p>What is always forgotten is latitude, and that we forget to learn from history and experience.<p>In Southern England, or California I doubt it&#x27;s much more than an annoying relic of olden days. But I don&#x27;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&#x27;t have DST.<p>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.<p>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.

As a European that&#x27;s living further up north than most Americans: Sorry, but no!<p>I don&#x27;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.<p>Except one, the cited effects are all about the switch from winter time to summer time.

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.<p>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.

I live by Wintertime since a few years now under the motto &quot;if you want to change the world start yourself&quot;. 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&#x27;t use a watch). I&#x27;ve my computer, tablet and phone shifted to mediterranean Tunis as they don&#x27;t have DST there since 2009. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.timeanddate.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;time&#x2F;tunisia-cancels-dst-2009.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.timeanddate.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;time&#x2F;tunisia-cancels-dst-200...</a>

Why can&#x27;t they just leave the time alone, and change their working hours during summer and winter?

That&#x27;s &quot;Saving&quot; time, not &quot;Savings&quot; time.

While we&#x27;re at it let&#x27;s get rid of leap seconds.<p>... and switch the entire planet to a single timezone (UTC).<p>... and require everyone use the same text encoding (UTF-8).<p>... and pick a single format for separating fields in numeric fields (commas for 000s and dots for decimal points).

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.

A recent article in the Washington Post (Wonkblog) making the case for &quot;Why daylight saving time isn’t as terrible as people think&quot;. US centric. The argument uses the data of number of days with &quot;reasonable&quot; sunrise and sunset times based on latitude&#x2F;longitude when using DST or not.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;wonk&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2016&#x2F;03&#x2F;11&#x2F;why-daylight-saving-time-isnt-as-terrible-as-people-think&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;wonk&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2016&#x2F;03&#x2F;11&#x2F;why-d...</a>

My favorite counterargument:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.leancrew.com&#x2F;all-this&#x2F;2013&#x2F;03&#x2F;why-i-like-dst&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.leancrew.com&#x2F;all-this&#x2F;2013&#x2F;03&#x2F;why-i-like-dst&#x2F;</a><p>&gt;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.<p>&gt;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.<p>DST is the only sensible option in my opinion.

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

I live in a a pocket region doesn&#x27;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.<p>Also, I am thrilled about news being at 11 again.

Let&#x27;s switch to dst all the time. It&#x27;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)

Split the difference (30 mins) and be done with it. <i></i>Please<i></i>.

I think Daylight Saving Time is a bad idea in the same sense that (abusing) global variables is a bad idea in programming.<p>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).<p>So if someone wants to save daylight, that should be achieved locally for example by changing school schedules.

I can&#x27;t help but think some of these statistics are ridiculous fear mongering, particularly the heart attacks.<p>&quot;Get rid of DST! If you get up an hour earlier than usual, you might die!&quot;

I&#x27;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?

There&#x27;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.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;leginfo.legislature.ca.gov&#x2F;faces&#x2F;billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB2496" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;leginfo.legislature.ca.gov&#x2F;faces&#x2F;billTextClient.xhtm...</a>

I was most interested by how the generated the tweets with my state and county representatives. The scripts is all in js&#x2F;app.js and uses maxmind&#x27;s geoip lookup to get back location information. It then uses the Sunlight Foundation&#x27;s api with the loaction information to pull back the twitter ids for the reps. Cool stuff.

It&#x27;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.

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.

Love DLST personally, don&#x27;t want to get up in the pitch black in the winter, but want long light in the evenings in summer. perfect.

This whole conversation got me thinking... Why not abolish time zones altogether and have the entire US be on the same time zone?

It&#x27;s Daylight Saving, not Daylight Savings.

So far I know that Chine made this choose long time 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.<p>In the USA, sports aren&#x27;t just sports. They&#x27;re more like sacraments, tentpole observances which help to shape the order of society.