
RescueTime: Daylight Savings Time costs the United States $480,000,000 - ivankirigin
http://blog.rescuetime.com/2009/03/11/daylight-savings-time-costs-the-united-states-480000000/
======
CWuestefeld
I've long contended that DST is dangerous and a money hole, although not in
the way that this article addresses. Anyone who lives to the west of a major
metro area will understand my point.

Twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall, commuters experience a
period during which the sun is right in their eyes. For those of us driving
east in the morning, and west in the evening, the sun is right in front of us
all the time, and when it's at the right (wrong) elevation, vision is
painfully obscured.

Earlier in the year the sun is too low to bother; later, the sun has risen
high enough that your visor can block it. But for that time period, traffic is
terrible because drivers can't see where they're going.

The thing about DST is that it resets this period. After having made it
through once, DST drags the clock around so that we must endure the same sun
glare again.

Once you start to think about this effect, it's clear that it must be costing
fuel and lost productivity from the traffic, and likely even injuries and
lives from accidents.

~~~
jacoblyles
well, do you get to skip the bad period on the other side?

~~~
chairface
Unfortunately, no.

In the spring the sunrise is getting earlier as time goes by. Then the clock
jumps forward an hour, which makes sunrise an hour later, causing the repeat
the op talked about.

In the fall, sunrise is getting later. The clock jumps backward an hour, which
makes sunrise an hour earlier. This causes the same repeat, in reverse (aka,
trending darker rather than lighter).

edit: Also, I have the experience to back this up. I've been one of the living
west of my workplace people for too long.

------
rudyfink
The loss of sixteen (16) minutes of office time twice a year has a cost,
clearly. I will add that my rhythm takes a hit for at least a week on each
shift too. I suspect other people share that cost too. That written, in my
opinion, the cost is more than worth it.

In exchange for the cost of thirty-two (32) minutes I get ~eight (8) months of
an extra hour of daylight later on in the day (~240 hours more). I'd argue
that this has a benefit to people. Further, I'd argue this benefit outweighs
the cost.

This article strikes me as only pointing out the thing that is seen and wholly
ignoring the unseen. It is cute but reality is not nearly so simple. In the
context of a company that makes monitoring software, this article makes sense.
They produce a metric, their view is through that metric, and they report the
metric.

~~~
jcl
If possible, it might be interesting to compare the data for Arizona with
neighboring states. Apparently Arizona does not observe daylight savings time.

While the conclusions from such a comparison may not necessarily apply to more
northern states, it would give an additional point of reference. (It's a pity
they don't have data for Indiana in 2005, which only went to daylight savings
time in 2006...)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_the_United_States#Dayli...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_the_United_States#Daylight_saving_time)

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
> _Apparently Arizona does not observe daylight savings time._

Neither does Indiana.

~~~
dehowell
No longer true. Indiana is mostly observing DST as of a couple of years ago.

------
doki_pen
Statistics like this are just as silly as "Employees using YouTube costs the
US 500 Trillion a year". Most knowledge workers don't work 9-5. They work
until the work is done. What they missed Monday morning will be made up for
during the rest of the week. I do hate Daylight Savings though..

~~~
aneesh
I agree, that knowledge workers usually work until the work is done. But 16
lost minutes from DST, or half-an-hour on YouTube, has a cost. It may not
affect _whether_ the work is done, but it probably does affect the _quality_
of the work done. It's a zero-sum game, and something's gotta give - either
work quality or quantity has to decrease, or else time spent on work has to
increase.

But it's a good question to ask. Maybe Tony & Co can tell us whether workers
make up for this loss over the course of the week.

------
tlrobinson
Daylights savings also increases the number of heart attacks
<http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/359/18/1966>

------
ewiethoff
What strikes me as weird is that for the past few years, the US has spent more
weeks in the calendar in DST than in Standard time, thereby making the
"standard" an aberration. Standard time has become a misnomer.

~~~
tlrobinson
It's "standard" relative to the rest of the world, no?

~~~
tlrobinson
Instead of (or in addition to) downvoting me, can you explain why I'm wrong?

------
mikeryan
in the numbers pulled out of our ass department.....

I'm not effective my first hour at work anyway. Its coffee and email time.
Second the lighter day has a tendency to make me more apt to work longer -
there's no accounting for that.

~~~
webwright
FWIW, these numbers are pulled out of an orifice that contains hundreds of
millions of second-by-second attention data.... Not our asses.

Now, I'll concede that some of the other numbers (salaries of knowledge
workers, numbers of knowledge workers, etc) are not toooo thoroughly
researched, but they are in the neighborhood.

A commenter suggested that "we make it up on the other end" (with "fall
back"), so we compared the fall DST to typical mondays and found that PEOPLE
LOGGED BELOW AVERAGE TIME THERE AS WELL (which was a bit of a surprise). I'm
assuming that people take the extra time they get if they wake up early to
have a hearty breakfast or watch the news or somesuch.

~~~
mikeryan
points for the orifice comment, i liked that one ;-)

But a few more points

One the time isn't lost, as long as I've been working we've been changing our
clocks. Its time already counted for in the natural cycle of business. Same as
the lost productivity around 3 day weekends - and productivity gained by leap
years.

Second if you can it would be interesting to compare productivity from the 3
weeks prior to the time change to the 3 week post the time change - I posited
that I'd work more in the days after the time change due to the additional
light at the end of day. I'd like to see if this is true.

------
sho
What's the point of articles like this? You can find any number of things
which "cost" any amount of "lost productivity". If a few minutes lost to DST
is such a big issue, what about Youtube? Shouldn't the government ban that?

The whole thing is a beat-up. Human nature, not any particular outside cause,
is responsible for "lost" time. And human nature picks it right back up, too -
this idea that "minutes spent with an app open" is some kind of definitive
measure of productivity is utterly useless.

What is it with people and DST, anyway? I've never had even the slightest
problem with it. Time zones are pretty much arbitrary, and we have to
constantly adjust them anyway (witness the leap second at beginning of this
year). All the infrastructure to do that is already in place. I don't see why
it's such a huge issue. Personally, I like it - if we didn't have DST here,
the sun would come up before 5am. I find the arguments about "the sun is in my
eyes when commuting" utterly spurious, the sun is always going to be in
someone's eyes.

Don't see what the problem is or what necessitates these contrived
justifications against it.

------
ars
How much does it earn on the other side? People are extra productive on the
day they get that extra hour of sleep.

------
rekstrom
If DST is taken away people will say it cost money for electricity in; the
work place, at home, lights on car...Also people might not be able to see to
drive when it is so dark, when driving in a cold area the snow or ice will not
melt as fast. Cars will have to use chains for their tires more often, it will
be really cold outside when people go to work, after school sports will be
held at the hottest time of the day...

------
heyadayo
The article is off by a factor of at least 2, given that $50,000/year ->
25$/hr, not $50/hr.

Moreover, everyone wastes time every day at the job, except sometimes, when
they have deadlines. If a worker misses 16 minutes some Monday, they'll
probably make it up over the course of the week.

Big deal.

------
ucdaz
Does anyone have any ideas to get the gov't to ban daylight savings time?

~~~
ivankirigin
It might be most effective on a state by state basis. A few states opting out
might make the others complain for Federal action, which would then do away
with the system, hopefully.

------
jganetsk
It's not called daylight savings time. It's daylight _saving_ time.

------
lionhearted
The link to Useit.com on loaded cost was interesting too, if a little dense in
language:

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/loadedcost.html>

------
mhb
Heart attack risk and daylight saving time:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507343>

------
jfornear
Annual revenues/profits take a hit on leap years, too.

------
rekstrom
wear sun glasses

------
time_management
$480m / 300m people = $1.60 per person.

DST covers 2/3 of the work-year, or approximately 160 work days. So it buys us
160 hours of extra evening light. (I'm not counting weekends, because then the
distinction between the hour lost of morning light and that gained of evening
light is immaterial.) That means we're paying $0.01 each per hour of evening
light. I'll take that deal.

In truth, I find that DST sucks for about 3 days, but after I've adjusted, I'm
very glad it's there. I'm not a dairy farmer, though.

~~~
ivankirigin
Doesn't DST make less light in the evening in the winter, in order to have
more in the morning? It's the winter that's behind, right?

~~~
time_management
No. Standard time is (in most places) closer to solar time.

The issue is that, when political time is fixed, most people naturally develop
a habit of waking up around the winter sunrise, year-round. This means that
1-3 hours of light, during the rest of the year, are "wasted".

Some anti-DST advocates have proposed making DST year-round, effectively
taking the time zone that is one hour eastward. The problem is that this would
put the winter sunrises into the 8:00 am hour, which people tend to like even
less than a mid-afternoon sunset.

~~~
ewiethoff
Older lady here. My little sister and I were children when Nixon instituted
DST for January 1974. We stood in the Minnesota cold in complete darkness (no
streetlights, often no moon) waving a flashlight at the morning school bus. We
checked the flashlight each night to be sure we'd be ready the next morning.
And my sister was always terrified of the dark, even with a flashlight.

That's a fine story for little-house-on-the-prairie anecdotal value, but I
wouldn't wish year-round DST on anyone. Not when you're farther north. Not
when the nearest ocean not blocked by mountains is the Arctic. Winter
"morning" per the DST clock is just too dark and too cold.

