
Stop Using the Daylight Savings Time - pbkhrv
https://stopdst.com/
======
wlesieutre
Maybe it's just me, but the way these statistics are worded is setting off my
skepticism alarms:

> Between 1986 and 1995, fatal traffic accidents rose 17% the Monday following
> the switch to Daylight Saving Time.

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.

For all this page says, accidents were up 17% _every_ day of the year over
that decade.

EDIT: Wikipedia says total US traffic deaths were lower in 1995 than 1986, so
I'll chalk this up as poor wording.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year)

~~~
nv-vn
>A 2014 study showed that the hour of sleep lost when switching to DST can
increase your risk of a heart attack by 25%

I highly doubt that one less hour of sleep on one day of the year can affect
that risk by so much. If that were the case, I assume the risk of heart attack
would be much higher than it is now.

~~~
caf
It's 25% higher _on that day_. For all that statistic tells you though, it
might just be bringing forward a heart attack you would otherwise have had the
following week.

~~~
pille
1.25*(a really tiny risk of a heart attack on a given day)

This same numerical trick happened when the WHO classified red meat as a
carcinogen "in the same category as" cigarettes, and it was stated that it
increased your risk of some cancer by ~50% (or something), but the baseline
risk is so low that it's a lot less dramatic than it sounds.

~~~
aws_ls
This. When I asked a doctor, who was suggesting 'a certain med would reduce
chances of some cardio incident by some 10s of percent' (I don't remember,
specific details), as to what is the base percent if would be affecting, he
sort of evaded the answer.

------
manigandham
All these articles seem to keep gloss over the actual issue: the _switch_
between standard time and DST twice a year.

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.

~~~
gaur
> 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.

Is adding a permanent 1-hour offset to all of our clocks really a more
sensible solution than convincing employers to shift their schedules one hour
earlier?

It just sounds kind of Kafkaesque... your boss has set your schedule too late
in the day, so your solution is to trick him by winding all his clocks forward
by one hour.

~~~
jasode
_> Is adding a permanent 1-hour offset to all of our clocks really a more
sensible solution than convincing employers to shift their schedules one hour
earlier?_

I think you're analyzing it from the perspective of mathematical logic. In an
isolated perspective, one employer (instead of all employers), can arbitrarily
change the working time as 7am-4pm instead of 8am-5pm because it's
mathematically equivalent to the +1 hour DST.

But society wants to coordinate on a bigger scale than that one employer you
were able to convince. (Children's school hours, restaurants, tv schedules,
customers calling help desks, etc). Also, the math viewpoint ignores the fact
that there are long standing cultural anchors tied to specific times such as
9am-5pm[1].

The bottom line is that it's easier to address the coordination problem by
hacking the time via permanent DST rather than adjusting _everyone 's_
familiarity around nominal times. Changing out the nominal times displayed in
glass windows doesn't look easier than implementing DST. Even changing nominal
times in the digital realm is a hassle: think of all the recurring meetings in
MS Outlook, Google Calendar, iPhones reminders, etc that say 10am-11am.
Millions of people would have to change those times to say 9am-10am. Again,
leaving those nominal times the same and fixing it more "globally" via DST
seems a lot simpler.

[1][https://www.google.com/search?q=store+opening+closing+times+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=store+opening+closing+times+window&biw=1171&bih=1421&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

~~~
echaozh
If the timetables are to be changed every March and November, the calendar
tool providers will make it easy for people to set up an automatic time slot
change.

The point is, for a lot of people (if not most of all), the timetables don't
need to be changed. If my working hour is 11am ~ 12pm, DST or no, I will see
daylight when going to work and not when coming back. 4am~2pm is likewise.

Your solution sounds like fixing the Y2K problem without updating the software
to use 4 or more digit variables for years, rather by making everyone living
the 20th century over and over again.

~~~
Piskvorrr
"Easy", "automatic", bah humbug! I take it you have never seen the hoops _any_
date library needs to jump through because of DST. (An example: your scheduled
task is at 2:30. When does it run on DST change, and how many times? 0? 1? 2?
Guess what: no right answer, just a lot of wrong ones. And that's one of the
_simplest_ examples.)

------
yes_or_gnome
It's the switch that everyone hates. Instead of ending DST, can we agree to
stop using Standard Time?

~~~
tempestn
Agreed! I'd rather have sun in the evening when I can enjoy it than when I'm
sleeping or working. DST year round would be fantastic.

~~~
zanny
That is blaming a symptom for a problem. The fact people "expect" the sun to
rise between 4-6am and go down between 6-9pm is just a product of a broken
timekeeping system from two hundred years ago.

"Time" is not a thing that cares what side of the planet you are on, and it
makes international scheduling and communication literally hell when you have
to calculate time zones.

If we are going to fix time, we should switch everyone to UTC time. If you
want to go to work in the dark and leave when the sun rises, have your company
schedule hours accordingly. Changing DST now doesn't change that, your
business is still setting hours arbitrarilly based around an archaic model of
"wake up at 7 work 9-5 go to bed at 11" no matter where you are on the planet.
It just makes no sense, and is simply culturally normative so people expect it
and structure their internal model of time around it.

~~~
pklausler
Unless international scheduling and communication are plunged into eternal
flames and tortured by demons, DST can't really be said to make them literally
hell.

~~~
zanny
Try writing international date & time library support for a client and get
back to me on what literal hell is :P

------
anexprogrammer
Both sides of the Atlantic these sort of articles crop up regularly. Move to
summer time year round and so forth.

What is always forgotten is latitude, and that we forget to learn from history
and experience.

In Southern England, or California I doubt it's much more than an annoying
relic of olden days. But I don'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't have DST.

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.

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.

~~~
MereInterest
Interesting. I would have guessed that it would have been the other way
around. Go far enough North, and DST is pointless because they're just isn't
enough daylight no matter where you put it.

Also, your comparison on latitude is a bit off. London is at a higher latitude
than Seattle, for example. It just doesn't get as cold, because you have the
Gulf Stream warming it up.

~~~
anexprogrammer
Wintertime there definitely isn't enough daylight to go around here, but
staying on summertime meant that northern England and Scotland wasn't having
sunrise until nearing 10am. Dark mornings, it seems, had more effect on
accidents than dark evenings.

I just picked southern parts of each nation, rather than checking. It may be
that it is more relevant to Canada than US, excepting Alaska. :)

Work and living patterns have changed quite a bit in 50 years too.

~~~
echaozh
China has only 1 timezone, which is based on a city on the east cost. In the
west part of the country, the sun always comes up and goes down later than
what we east coasters consider as normal. However, they got used to it anyway.

Time zones are artificial and don't make it too complicated. Pick a simple
solution and let people adjust.

~~~
jcranmer
From what I've heard, in Xinjiang (the westernmost province of China), the
locals completely ignore the Beijing timezone rules and work on a local
timezone that's two hours off, although that's also in part a (relatively)
benign form of civil resistance against the unwanted Chinese government.

------
legulere
As a European that's living further up north than most Americans: Sorry, but
no!

I don'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.

Except one, the cited effects are all about the switch from winter time to
summer time.

~~~
scrollaway
If you're far north enough (which you would be, if you are "further north than
most americans"), DST won't help. Sunrise in winter morning is several hours
off. The entire day is distorted. Shifting things one hour is useless.

~~~
legulere
Europe lies relatively far north: [http://www.astro-
tom.com/images/latitudes.gif](http://www.astro-tom.com/images/latitudes.gif)

DST will help: Lastest sunrise in Munich is 8:04 in winter, earliest in summer
is 5:13. That would be 4:13 without DST.

------
ianbicking
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.

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.

~~~
fanf2
Clearly DST should be improved to better match the sunrise!
[http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.10.html#subj1](http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.10.html#subj1)

------
fsiefken
I live by Wintertime since a few years now under the motto "if you want to
change the world start yourself". 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't use a watch). I've my computer, tablet
and phone shifted to mediterranean Tunis as they don't have DST there since
2009. [http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/tunisia-cancels-
dst-200...](http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/tunisia-cancels-
dst-2009.html)

~~~
runeb
How do you function in relation to other people?

~~~
fsiefken
Half a year all appointments I make with others I translate back and forth,
but the technology exists to make it easier. I'm just in a different location
and timezone then the rest.

------
executesorder66
Why can't they just leave the time alone, and change their working hours
during summer and winter?

~~~
imron
If you are the only person in your life, fine.

If you have kids, or a wife or anyone else that you might like to spend
daylight time with in the evening then it starts to get harder to manage.

~~~
wtbob
> If you have kids, or a wife or anyone else that you might like to spend
> daylight time with in the evening then it starts to get harder to manage.

People always say this like it's a compelling argument. But guess what? People
lready work different hours; schools and business ar already open for
different lengths of time; different businesses and industries already have
different norms. People live different distances from work. I've worked 7-4,
8-5, 9-6 and more, and have had commutes as short as ten minutes and as long
as two hours.

And you know what? Things work out alright anyway. A world in which individual
organizations determine their working hours is the world we already have.

------
bgentry
That's "Saving" time, not "Savings" time.

~~~
rusanu
Article is correct, only the HN title has the s

------
koolba
While we're at it let's get rid of leap seconds.

... and switch the entire planet to a single timezone (UTC).

... and require everyone use the same text encoding (UTF-8).

... and pick a single format for separating fields in numeric fields (commas
for 000s and dots for decimal points).

~~~
bitwalker
UTC is intrinsically linked to leap seconds, that's why it's called
Coordinated Universal Time, because it's coordinated to shifts in the solar
year using leap seconds. I do think everyone using UTC + an offset would be a
great switch though.

~~~
Piskvorrr
I thought that's what time zones do: "it's UTC on server, the user is in
+01,add a hour to current time, format and show it to them."

------
dheera
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.

------
kirian
A recent article in the Washington Post (Wonkblog) making the case for "Why
daylight saving time isn’t as terrible as people think". US centric. The
argument uses the data of number of days with "reasonable" sunrise and sunset
times based on latitude/longitude when using DST or not.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/11/why-d...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/11/why-
daylight-saving-time-isnt-as-terrible-as-people-think/)

------
minikites
My favorite counterargument:

[http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-
dst/](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-dst/)

>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.

>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.

DST is the only sensible option in my opinion.

~~~
gerbilly
>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.

Well, that's no longer a problem because children are never left unsupervised
anymore.

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

~~~
simendsjo
I guess you don't live far up north. All wake hours in total darkness is quite
depressing.

~~~
wtbob
You do realise that DST doesn't actually add any daylight to the day, and that
if you get far enough north it'll be dark in the morning even an hour later
than usual, right? In fact, if you get far enough north the sun won't rise at
all in the winter…

------
qjighap
I live in a a pocket region doesn'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.

Also, I am thrilled about news being at 11 again.

------
weaksauce
Let's switch to dst all the time. It'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)

------
transfire
Split the difference (30 mins) and be done with it. __Please __.

------
sugarfactory
I think Daylight Saving Time is a bad idea in the same sense that (abusing)
global variables is a bad idea in programming.

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).

So if someone wants to save daylight, that should be achieved locally for
example by changing school schedules.

~~~
cromulent
I think perhaps the global variable in this case is the tilt of the Earth's
axis and the Earth's orbital position. The local variable is the offset in
your local hemisphere / longitude.

------
xirdstl
I can't help but think some of these statistics are ridiculous fear mongering,
particularly the heart attacks.

"Get rid of DST! If you get up an hour earlier than usual, you might die!"

------
donatj
I'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?

~~~
caf
You are, of course, free to set your watch to whatever time you like. But if
you do that, you can't expect anyone else to agree with your view of the
current time.

------
toast0
There'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.

[1]
[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB2496)

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

------
sanqui
It'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.

------
beefsack
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.

~~~
ghaff
So now, rather than remembering what timezone someone/some location is, you
have to remember instead what is "normal daytime" for that locale. Everyone
worldwide isn't going to operate on the same schedule regardless on the
position of the sun.

~~~
Karunamon
We have these devices called computers which are quite excellent at this kind
of task.

Snark aside, it wouldn't be that hard to have the clocks all set to UTC, and
then a second "day equivalent" clock that's used only for translation, but not
for actual timekeeping.

------
mbfg
Love DLST personally, don't want to get up in the pitch black in the winter,
but want long light in the evenings in summer. perfect.

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

~~~
dboyd
It would screw up high-noon for a lot of people. However, getting the US down
to two time zones would be much less problematic, and achieve most of the
benefits you'd see from one time zone...

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/daylight...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/daylight-
saving-time-is-terrible-heres-a-simple-plan-to-fix-it/281075/)

~~~
CiaranMcNulty
Is 'high noon' that important that it needs preserving?

~~~
minikites
How else when you know when to duel?

But seriously, look up how time zones work in China. The whole country is on
Beijing time so the western areas essentially maintain two clocks because the
"official" clock is so far off the day/night cycle.

------
paulddraper
It's Daylight Saving, not Daylight Savings.

------
stevesun21
So far I know that Chine made this choose long time ago.

------
bitwize
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.

In the USA, sports aren't just sports. They're more like sacraments, tentpole
observances which help to shape the order of society.

~~~
cauterized
Given that evening games are often played under artificial lighting anyway, I
don't see what difference it makes in the end.

