Eliminating Daylight Savings Time would make the average American’s life darker(natesilver.net)
natesilver.net
Eliminating Daylight Savings Time would make the average American’s life darker
https://www.natesilver.net/p/save-daylight-savings-time
65 comments
A more recent study somewhat casts doubt on those conclusions:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254245482...
Besides, it's not like standard time is any more natural than daylight savings. The whole adherence to a strict twenty-four hour cycle is unnatural. In antiquity, people would plan their days around sunrise and sunset, and their bodies would gradually adjust to the seasonal shortening and lengthening of daylight with no abrupt transition necessary.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254245482...
Besides, it's not like standard time is any more natural than daylight savings. The whole adherence to a strict twenty-four hour cycle is unnatural. In antiquity, people would plan their days around sunrise and sunset, and their bodies would gradually adjust to the seasonal shortening and lengthening of daylight with no abrupt transition necessary.
> Besides, it's not like standard time is any more natural than daylight savings
The question is whether there are any downsides from abruptly changing wake cycles twice a year. That article does seem to bound the cardiac risks somewhat, but there's also the auto accident angle. There's also just the human suffering: stepping the clocks sucks.
> and their bodies would gradually adjust to the seasonal shortening and lengthening of daylight with no abrupt transition necessary.
Yah, but there's nothing gradual or natural about a 1 hour society-wide step in wakeup times.
I'm not saying that people or businesses should never adjust what they're doing for daylight or other considerations. DST is a ham-fisted, blunt approach attempting to crudely fix the problem just by stepping society's clock.
The question is whether there are any downsides from abruptly changing wake cycles twice a year. That article does seem to bound the cardiac risks somewhat, but there's also the auto accident angle. There's also just the human suffering: stepping the clocks sucks.
> and their bodies would gradually adjust to the seasonal shortening and lengthening of daylight with no abrupt transition necessary.
Yah, but there's nothing gradual or natural about a 1 hour society-wide step in wakeup times.
I'm not saying that people or businesses should never adjust what they're doing for daylight or other considerations. DST is a ham-fisted, blunt approach attempting to crudely fix the problem just by stepping society's clock.
Relative opening hours would be quite interesting: this store opens 1h after sunrise and closes 1h before sunset.
fabulous idea - but you are making everyone know what time Sun rises and sets as well as light math. the phone will also be ringing constantly with “hey what time you close today?”
There's also an uptick in car crashes after both clock changes, which the article mentions.
I think that's probably worse than some additional waking darkness, whether it's in the morning or the evening. We're pretty good at artificial lighting these days.
I think that's probably worse than some additional waking darkness, whether it's in the morning or the evening. We're pretty good at artificial lighting these days.
Car accidents too.
I live in Australia, I work for a company headquartered in the US. For 10-15 years I've reported to a US-based manager (not just at my current job, also at my old one); actually only in the last couple of years I've been reporting to someone in Europe instead. And all three of Australia, the US and Europe have DST – but starting/ending at different dates, plus Australia being in the Southern Hemisphere, it's in the opposite half of the year. So it complicates remembering the time zone differences, because they vary across the year, and mean we have to change meeting schedules (a meeting time someone can manageably make one month becomes too early/late a few months later because DST has changed the offsets.) So I think if everybody got rid of DST, it would make that aspect of my life easier, and lots of other people's too.
For what it’s worth I think switching twice a year is stupid and anachronistic, and I like the general spirit of fixing stuff that’s broken.
Doctors have been warning us for decades that switching is worse than just anachronistic as well.
Side note, year round DST, eliminating the penny, implementing a flat tax, these DOGE initiatives remind me of middle school persuasive essay topics where we were randomly assigned for/against and graded on how well we could use spell check and cite howstuffworks.com in APA format.
Doctors have been warning us for decades that switching is worse than just anachronistic as well.
Side note, year round DST, eliminating the penny, implementing a flat tax, these DOGE initiatives remind me of middle school persuasive essay topics where we were randomly assigned for/against and graded on how well we could use spell check and cite howstuffworks.com in APA format.
Yeah, someone ought to tell Elon about Chesterton‘s fence before he cuts it down…
The best mental model I’ve come up with is that 1pm just makes a better midday for most people than 12.
Yes, We want to logically make midday be when the sun is directly overhead. (Split sunlight hours evenly in half)
But human nature is that it takes a little longer to get going each day and this helps us align daylight with human nature.
Yes, We want to logically make midday be when the sun is directly overhead. (Split sunlight hours evenly in half)
But human nature is that it takes a little longer to get going each day and this helps us align daylight with human nature.
I think it’s better to switch to dst permanently
We already tried it in the 70's. People hated it. It was switched back.
If we're going to bother again, we should at least go with standard time this instance.
If we're going to bother again, we should at least go with standard time this instance.
Why not split the difference?
As I like to say in some meetings when we come to a compromise ... "Is everyone equally unhappy now?"
As I like to say in some meetings when we come to a compromise ... "Is everyone equally unhappy now?"
I guess that would be what we have today.
No. I mean ... instead of:
* permanently staying on standard time
* permanently staying on dst
* shifting between the two every spring/fall
we permanently stay at a time that's 30 minutes between standard and DST
* permanently staying on standard time
* permanently staying on dst
* shifting between the two every spring/fall
we permanently stay at a time that's 30 minutes between standard and DST
Permanent DST has problems in the northern parts of the US. Consider Seattle as an example.
In PST today, December 21, Sunrise was just before 8 am and sunset will be around 4:20 pm. Change that to PDT and we have sunrise just before 9 am and sunset around 5:20 pm.
The coldest time of the day tends to be in the morning before sunrise. On foggy days the fog is more likely in the morning than in the evening. When it freezes the roads are more likely to be icy in the morning. Even if the air temperature doesn't get above freezing all day there is a chance that sunlight during the day might heat the roads enough to melt the ice by evening.
Because of all this if you have to travel in the dark, whether as a driver or as a pedestrian or cyclist, you will generally prefer evening dark to morning dark.
In addition to the asymmetry between morning and evening weather there is also an asymmetry in traffic intensity. Pick any two random people and compare what times they travel to and from work or school.
Their morning travel times are more likely to be closer together than their evening travel times. Offices all start at about the same time, so you get office workers all coming at about the same time. Similar for elementary school start times, and middle schools start times, and high school start times.
At the other end of the day first you've got schools getting out which generally happens a couple hours before offices let out. Second, workers tend to leave work over a wider range of times than they arrive. You've got people who stay late to get something done (much more common than people who go in early). You've got people who do errands after work before heading home.
So at latitudes like that of Seattle permanent DST pushes the morning commute farther into worse weather and the morning commute is the one this is already the highest risk because it is the more concentrated commute and it is the one with the most overlap between adults driving for work and kids walking or biking for school.
Permanent standard time also is better for our circadian rhythms than permanent DST.
Most people here are too young to remember this, but the US tried year around DST in the '70s due to an oil supply disruption caused by war in the mideast. They thought permanent DST would lower energy consumption. It turns out it didn't have affect energy consumption much, but it was pretty much universally hated for the downsides I listed above and ditched after a year.
In PST today, December 21, Sunrise was just before 8 am and sunset will be around 4:20 pm. Change that to PDT and we have sunrise just before 9 am and sunset around 5:20 pm.
The coldest time of the day tends to be in the morning before sunrise. On foggy days the fog is more likely in the morning than in the evening. When it freezes the roads are more likely to be icy in the morning. Even if the air temperature doesn't get above freezing all day there is a chance that sunlight during the day might heat the roads enough to melt the ice by evening.
Because of all this if you have to travel in the dark, whether as a driver or as a pedestrian or cyclist, you will generally prefer evening dark to morning dark.
In addition to the asymmetry between morning and evening weather there is also an asymmetry in traffic intensity. Pick any two random people and compare what times they travel to and from work or school.
Their morning travel times are more likely to be closer together than their evening travel times. Offices all start at about the same time, so you get office workers all coming at about the same time. Similar for elementary school start times, and middle schools start times, and high school start times.
At the other end of the day first you've got schools getting out which generally happens a couple hours before offices let out. Second, workers tend to leave work over a wider range of times than they arrive. You've got people who stay late to get something done (much more common than people who go in early). You've got people who do errands after work before heading home.
So at latitudes like that of Seattle permanent DST pushes the morning commute farther into worse weather and the morning commute is the one this is already the highest risk because it is the more concentrated commute and it is the one with the most overlap between adults driving for work and kids walking or biking for school.
Permanent standard time also is better for our circadian rhythms than permanent DST.
Most people here are too young to remember this, but the US tried year around DST in the '70s due to an oil supply disruption caused by war in the mideast. They thought permanent DST would lower energy consumption. It turns out it didn't have affect energy consumption much, but it was pretty much universally hated for the downsides I listed above and ditched after a year.
I’m in Seattle and I wait at a bus stop every morning at 7:25am so I’m deeply aware of how it feels to go to school in the dark vs sunrise vs light (currently it is full dark, even with the shift).
Honestly, I think now it’s just better to go to work/school in the dark to get an hour more after work to play/be in the world. Obviously each city is different, but Seattle is miserable in the winter and it would be way more fun to have sunset at 5:15pm instead of the current 4:15pm. People don’t play catch or go to parks before school, they do it after so the darkness is partially painful for loosing time to hang with kids.
That said, the anecdotes about the 70s are super interesting. I was not alive then, but I wonder if work schedules were quite a bit different from they are now to account for the difference in thinking? I know plenty of people leaving at 7am to beat traffic across the bridge (well before sunset with or without dst). Perhaps in the 70s people just left at 7:30am specifically to make it to work at 8am and the sunset time mattered more then our world of 2 hour rush hour and hybrid remote work?
Honestly, I think now it’s just better to go to work/school in the dark to get an hour more after work to play/be in the world. Obviously each city is different, but Seattle is miserable in the winter and it would be way more fun to have sunset at 5:15pm instead of the current 4:15pm. People don’t play catch or go to parks before school, they do it after so the darkness is partially painful for loosing time to hang with kids.
That said, the anecdotes about the 70s are super interesting. I was not alive then, but I wonder if work schedules were quite a bit different from they are now to account for the difference in thinking? I know plenty of people leaving at 7am to beat traffic across the bridge (well before sunset with or without dst). Perhaps in the 70s people just left at 7:30am specifically to make it to work at 8am and the sunset time mattered more then our world of 2 hour rush hour and hybrid remote work?
> Permanent DST has problems in the northern parts of the US.
Then adjust the time zones so northern states are one zone earlier.
Then adjust the time zones so northern states are one zone earlier.
Probably not a popular opinion, but I’d prefer to eliminate local time zones completely. I’ll figure out how to live on UTC, my brain still has enough plasticity (I think).
Another UTC person! I thought I was alone in my odd crusade; nobody even knows what I'm talking about when I suggest it.
Timekeeping was never the point of timekeeping anyways...
Get up when the sun rises and go to bed when you’re tired. Leave the clocks alone.
And go to work/school when you feel like it? Maybe you have that luxury but most of us don't.
Not really when you feel like it. The length of an hour changed with the length of a day in the ancient kingdom of Israel. That is still in use and called the halachic hour. Maybe we are trying to cram too much stuff into the day just because we have a local oscillator on our wrists now.
I've been saying that for decades. The concept of time zones became anachronistic when instant communication went worldwide.
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Can we switch to 24h time like sane human beings, too?
I highly recommend checking out the charts on the Time and Date website: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/washington-dc. When considering the abolition of DST, it is essential to choose the time that best aligns with Solar Noon in a given location. I’m also curious why the time change on these charts is not symmetrical. DST seems truly absurd.
> True, the twice-annual time changes — you know the drill: spring forward, fall back — are annoying and associated with some tangible consequences, such as an increase in traffic accidents because of sleep deprivation. But to be honest, those consequences are pretty minor. One estimate is that they only amount to about 30 extra traffic deaths per year in a country of 335 million people.
Is more than that, and is not just traffic. How many deaths would be caused by losing losing a few minutes of light in summer?
You should move to DST like lives depend on it. Because they actually do.
Is more than that, and is not just traffic. How many deaths would be caused by losing losing a few minutes of light in summer?
You should move to DST like lives depend on it. Because they actually do.
>If we reverted to year-round standard time as Trump proposes, those times would shift forward an hour, meaning sunrise at 4:24 a.m. and sunset at 7:31 p.m. No more of those glorious summer evenings spent at Citi Field or Yankee Stadium where it’s still light out until the sixth inning.
Why? Businesses can't switch operating hours during summer or events like sports and concerts can be schedulled earlier or later?
Why? Businesses can't switch operating hours during summer or events like sports and concerts can be schedulled earlier or later?
If people who want DST can just switch operating hours during summer instead of imposing DST on everyone else, then people who want year-round winter time can just switch operating hours during summer instead of imposing year-round winter time on everyone else.
It's a bogus argument either way.
Now I am in the blessed position of working from home again, I can choose when I get up. What I choose is this:
- for 26 weeks of the year (broadly from spring equinox to autumn equinox) I get up at 7am (which would be 6am in the absence of DST)
- for 6 weeks of the year (broadly centred on the winter solstice) I get up at 7:45am
- it takes 10 weeks for me to switch from getting up at 7am to getting up at 7:45am: I get up 2 minutes later every day for 5 weeks, and 1 minute later every day for another 5 weeks (and the clocks go back during this)
- it takes me 10 weeks to switch the other way: I get up 1 minute early every day for 5 weeks, then 2 minutes earlier every day for another 5 weeks
I do this to maximise the amount of daylight I get during the winter, without having to get up in the dark.
The point of me telling you all this is: the hard part is not getting up at a different time every day for 10 weeks. The hard part is synchronising with people who are essentially living in a different time zone.
This is why I don't do this when I work in an office, even just one day a week: I can change when I get up by a minute or two every day, but the trains won't change when they run by the same amount. That 9am meeting I need to be in the office for is still going to be at 9am, and the guy who controls when it starts won't agree to move it.
When I work in an office, I can't choose my timezone. Neither can you. Neither can anyone else.
(The dates I target aren't really the equinoxes/solstices. What I actually care about is the latest sunrise, which is a week and a half after the winter solstice, and shift everything accordingly.)
It's a bogus argument either way.
Now I am in the blessed position of working from home again, I can choose when I get up. What I choose is this:
- for 26 weeks of the year (broadly from spring equinox to autumn equinox) I get up at 7am (which would be 6am in the absence of DST)
- for 6 weeks of the year (broadly centred on the winter solstice) I get up at 7:45am
- it takes 10 weeks for me to switch from getting up at 7am to getting up at 7:45am: I get up 2 minutes later every day for 5 weeks, and 1 minute later every day for another 5 weeks (and the clocks go back during this)
- it takes me 10 weeks to switch the other way: I get up 1 minute early every day for 5 weeks, then 2 minutes earlier every day for another 5 weeks
I do this to maximise the amount of daylight I get during the winter, without having to get up in the dark.
The point of me telling you all this is: the hard part is not getting up at a different time every day for 10 weeks. The hard part is synchronising with people who are essentially living in a different time zone.
This is why I don't do this when I work in an office, even just one day a week: I can change when I get up by a minute or two every day, but the trains won't change when they run by the same amount. That 9am meeting I need to be in the office for is still going to be at 9am, and the guy who controls when it starts won't agree to move it.
When I work in an office, I can't choose my timezone. Neither can you. Neither can anyone else.
(The dates I target aren't really the equinoxes/solstices. What I actually care about is the latest sunrise, which is a week and a half after the winter solstice, and shift everything accordingly.)
> When I work in an office, I can't choose my timezone. Neither can you. Neither can anyone else.
And this is the whole point - DST gives those whose work schedules aren't flexible an hour of extra usable daylight at the time of year when it is available and pleasant to be outside.
And this is the whole point - DST gives those whose work schedules aren't flexible an hour of extra usable daylight at the time of year when it is available and pleasant to be outside.
Defaults matter. Sure, everything could shift their hours back in the summer, but they won’t.
It’s like one of those old tricks for scrolling raster graphics. If you want to move the screen over five pixels, you can copy everything in VRAM over five bytes, or you can add five to the base address register and everything moves automatically on the next frame.
It’s like one of those old tricks for scrolling raster graphics. If you want to move the screen over five pixels, you can copy everything in VRAM over five bytes, or you can add five to the base address register and everything moves automatically on the next frame.
Nate Silver is a pretty good statistician. Unfortunately, he tried to parlay his popularity into a reputation of being an expert on everything. Not going so well.
But that's also not really what Trump is proposing, right? The NYT article Nate Silver linked to quotes:
>“Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is OK with me!” Mr. Trump posted on social media in March 2019.
I presume by "ending Daylight Saving Time" he meant making DST permanent and ending the process of changing, which seems to be what everyone agrees is the right thing to do.
>“Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is OK with me!” Mr. Trump posted on social media in March 2019.
I presume by "ending Daylight Saving Time" he meant making DST permanent and ending the process of changing, which seems to be what everyone agrees is the right thing to do.
As someone who grew up in Arizona, please stop this silliness. Sure, once a year you get an extra hour of last call. Otherwise it seems pointless. Of course I also don't like it getting dark at 4:30 pm either.
That’s a lot longer post than I anticipated on the subject.
Just so I understand the other side of the argument: where is the purported inefficiency of keeping DST coming from?
Just so I understand the other side of the argument: where is the purported inefficiency of keeping DST coming from?
According to this article, a rather weak argument about people not liking to wake up before sunrise based on questionable correlation of commute times to sunrise times, ignoring factors such as average commute lengths, dominant (historical) industries, effective natural light at different times in modern housing.
From that it makes an (incorrect) assumption about the value of AM sunlight over PM sunlight and declares that all-year DST is pointless.
In my opinion the only argument against all-year DST which holds any water at all, and even then not much, is the concern about kids going to school in the dark. However, since many places don't have enough winter daylight to go around, trade-offs need to be made and kids are probably better off on-net having daylight time during their free time instead of while eating their toast inside and commuting to school.
From that it makes an (incorrect) assumption about the value of AM sunlight over PM sunlight and declares that all-year DST is pointless.
In my opinion the only argument against all-year DST which holds any water at all, and even then not much, is the concern about kids going to school in the dark. However, since many places don't have enough winter daylight to go around, trade-offs need to be made and kids are probably better off on-net having daylight time during their free time instead of while eating their toast inside and commuting to school.
Kids being forced to start school in basically the middle of the night is another especially American phenomenon that requires a separate solution, I feel.
What solutions have the non-Americans developed to deal with it?
Start school at a later time? Have other types od take home work if a day is shortened as well?
I've wondered if the problem stated in the article might be ameliorated by also dividing timezones by latitude.
I'll just leave this here since it is just so 'simple' to state a verbal objective without any insight as to the complexity behind the words that were enunciated. We see this time and again in our ever changing complex world where technology already has established a clear lock-in dependency and now someone suggests to change a foundational aspect of those systems, time, without considering any impacts?
My trail of crumbs from experience: And what about all the daylight savings time software logic that is baked into critical systems which require perpetual uptime supporting said modern society? I ask this question because I have personally written daylight savings time management into several software systems and this 'old code' just works and has for decades. Now if that 'old code' is no longer needed, who is going to change it? If that code does get changed then how will it be deployed to those 'old' systems? I have so many more relevant questions for those not thinking about the impacts of this change but I do not want to overwhelm anyone reading up to this point. Consider for a moment your own devices that have a 24 hour clock contained within. It is beyond obvious to those of us who practice big picture thinking in which we know that the "majority" does not maintain their devices and with time being a core factor of most technology changing our implementation of time will therefore break a lot of that technology.
Should such a change occur it is not something that can be 'walked' in when business feels like doing it and therefore it IMMEDIATELY becomes a top priority for any technology impacted that MUST adopt the change. Another Y2K like event coming for those that lived the original one. We are certain to see a failure of several systems and one can only hope that changing time doesn't equate to those systems invoking loss of life because those with experience on such matters know that losses of all kinds are certain to happen, just give it time.
My trail of crumbs from experience: And what about all the daylight savings time software logic that is baked into critical systems which require perpetual uptime supporting said modern society? I ask this question because I have personally written daylight savings time management into several software systems and this 'old code' just works and has for decades. Now if that 'old code' is no longer needed, who is going to change it? If that code does get changed then how will it be deployed to those 'old' systems? I have so many more relevant questions for those not thinking about the impacts of this change but I do not want to overwhelm anyone reading up to this point. Consider for a moment your own devices that have a 24 hour clock contained within. It is beyond obvious to those of us who practice big picture thinking in which we know that the "majority" does not maintain their devices and with time being a core factor of most technology changing our implementation of time will therefore break a lot of that technology.
Should such a change occur it is not something that can be 'walked' in when business feels like doing it and therefore it IMMEDIATELY becomes a top priority for any technology impacted that MUST adopt the change. Another Y2K like event coming for those that lived the original one. We are certain to see a failure of several systems and one can only hope that changing time doesn't equate to those systems invoking loss of life because those with experience on such matters know that losses of all kinds are certain to happen, just give it time.
Define 7am as sunrise.
Define 7pm as sunset.
Let the datetime and timezone maintainers figure the rest out.
Define 7pm as sunset.
Let the datetime and timezone maintainers figure the rest out.
At what granularity? Using a theoretical horizon, or the actual local horizon even for valleys? Most days aren't the equinox, so how would this deal with seconds being fixed but the 12 daytime hours being a different amount of actual time from the 12 nighttime hours? Would a kWh be a different amount of energy depending on what the date is and whether it's daytime or nighttime?
Yes.
If I ever become a crazy dictator, I will implement this idea.
Also implement one of those revised calendar schemes like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
Or a sane dictator even
Then your 7am will almost NEVER match my 7am. Or anyone else's 7am. It may only be by nanoseconds, or it may be hours (i.e. east coast vs west coast USA). So how would that even work in the real world?
What, so a second’s length changes? Or there is a variable and non-integer number of hours in a day? Or minutes in an hour?
hope you don't live near of the earth poles.
Yeah, so what? How about making time non-linear so you can lead an even brighter life? Just stop fucking around with daylight savings and messing with my sleep schedule twice a year.
Shops and local businesses should just adjust to the DST by changing their schedules so leave it coherent with the sun.
Opening times: May-November 09:00-18:00 June-October: 10:00-19:00 For example
Opening times: May-November 09:00-18:00 June-October: 10:00-19:00 For example
Yeah, the whole thing was a hack to force businesses to change their business hours back when that mattered more. Today, let schools or banks change their hours if they actually need to.
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https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc0807104