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Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

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Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#41

Post by James_Henry »

samatman wrote: post #15
mjevans wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vote for no more adjustments, I don't care if that's UTC, nation wide 'Eastern', DST or not DST... just leave things the same all year. I've got a slight preference for everyone going UTC with no DST so that meetings and events are easier to schedule across the world. UTC would be great if it weren't for how everyone wants to think of E.G. 8AM or 9AM or whatever as a common start time and then uses DST to try and adj…

Right now, if I want to schedule a meeting with London, I have two steps: figure out a good time for me, check if it's reasonable in London, adjust if necessary. If London was in the same time zone, I'd have to ascertain, somehow, what 0800 actually means in terms of the workday, and multiply that across every time zone I have to confer with (and there are a lot). No thanks. I like knowing that 5 pm means more-or-les…

You have to look it up either way, so I don't really understand why it would really be too much harder. For an example, if you are on the west coast you'd learn that 17 to 2 are good hours for you. Suppose on the day in question you know that 1 is the best time for you. Then you'd look at London and note that 9 to 18 are probably good for them. So you'll have to adjust. I don't see what new steps are introduced.

You are right that it is nice to now what 5 pm means pretty much everywhere but Western China, but that same sentiment can be expressed by saying early evening everywhere including Western China.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#42

Post by James_Henry »

ska wrote: post #22
mjevans wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vote for no more adjustments, I don't care if that's UTC, nation wide 'Eastern', DST or not DST... just leave things the same all year. I've got a slight preference for everyone going UTC with no DST so that meetings and events are easier to schedule across the world. UTC would be great if it weren't for how everyone wants to think of E.G. 8AM or 9AM or whatever as a common start time and then uses DST to try and adj…

> UTC would be great if it weren't for how everyone wants to think of E.G. 8AM or 9AM or whatever as a common start time You mean people want to think about hours in a way that is useful to them where they live? Doesn't sound crazy. If everyone moved to UTC you wouldn't solve any real problems. Sure, everyone in New York could get used to their day starting at noon or whatever (to what benefit?) but if you wanted to…

Everyone moving to UTC could make people start thinking about what time is actually appropriate to start the day instead of defaulting to 8 or 9 am. A lot of people might not want to think about that, but it could end up quite a bit better for public health.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#43

Post by James_Henry »

blackguardx wrote: post #12
mjevans wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vote for no more adjustments, I don't care if that's UTC, nation wide 'Eastern', DST or not DST... just leave things the same all year. I've got a slight preference for everyone going UTC with no DST so that meetings and events are easier to schedule across the world. UTC would be great if it weren't for how everyone wants to think of E.G. 8AM or 9AM or whatever as a common start time and then uses DST to try and adj…

They already do this in China. They have one time zone, but people in Western China don't actually shift their schedules. That means that a 9:00 AM start time for work is actually more like 6:00 AM Solar Time. All of China's timezone is keyed to Beijing time.

Do they really not change their schedules? and how much of that is similar to the fact that someone on the west coast may need to operate on east coast time due to financial markets, customers, etc?

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#44

Post by James_Henry »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #29
ck2 wrote: post #21

It's funny how the majority of people can't get politicians to undo DST for decades now. Makes the tiny change in healthcare for some look like a major miracle. I think they just altered the DST start/end days, I remember it used to end before Halloween until too many kids got hit or killed by cars in the dark.

In the US the dates of DST were changed during the Bush administration as a cheap political gimmick to make it look like he was doing something about energy prices. It didn't help much in that regard but caused plenty of chaos in the IT sector where a significant amount of systems were designed to adjust twice a year for DST but weren't designed for the date span of DST to change.

From what I understand there are still a lot of hospitals that have to switch to paper twice a year because of DST issues. If I remember right it is mainly Epic.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#45

Post by James_Henry »

java-man wrote: post #3
CamperBob2 wrote: post #2

Very hard to believe that more daylight later in the day is a net negative for traffic safety. In any case, the solution is to pick one timeframe and stop changing it .

It's not the amount of light, it's the abrupt change in the sleep pattern.

It does have something to do with the light though because you have a natural circadian rhythm that is disturbed if you are forced to get up earlier than your body should and for a lot of people that would mean that driving early in the morning, even if they have been doing it all year round is going to be more dangerous.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#46

Post by sturgill »

scrollaway wrote: post #24
benrbray wrote: post #23

I recognize that my position is uncommon, but I am in favor of what I call "2-DST" (two minus DST), a position which recognizes that DST is fundamentally backwards . Fewer daylight hours in the winter means we should turn the clocks forward in the winter , not the summer! "2-DST" is permanent daylight savings, except we additionally set the clocks an hour forward for the winter (just like we do now, in March). More o…

I always find these arguments kind of weird. Whether we turn or stop turning the clocks forwards/backwards doesn't mean we have to keep business hours the exact same, or even keep them static. Must be a US thing, what with all its timezones. China has a single timezone, and doesn't observe DST. Do you think that means people in the extreme west of china have to wake up at the exact same time as people in Beijing? In…

I’m a big fan of everyone in the world just using UTC and calling it a day. A meeting at 0700 is exactly what you think it means. But I also never expect it to happen.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#47

Post by minikites »

phaedryx wrote: post #39
minikites wrote: post #20

I'm a fan of changing the clocks twice a year for the reasons nicely laid out in this article: 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 art…

It would be better for children to start school later in the day anyway.

Many parents would have to adjust their work hours in response. Not impossible, but another large hurdle.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#48

Post by tlb »

benrbray wrote: post #23

I recognize that my position is uncommon, but I am in favor of what I call "2-DST" (two minus DST), a position which recognizes that DST is fundamentally backwards . Fewer daylight hours in the winter means we should turn the clocks forward in the winter , not the summer! "2-DST" is permanent daylight savings, except we additionally set the clocks an hour forward for the winter (just like we do now, in March). More o…

Suppose you're running a business that requires physical presense for 8 hours/day, but the hours don't have to align with anyone else's. Can you propose a formula that, given sunrise & sunset times, gives optimum work hours?

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#49

Post by gyrgtyn »

James_Henry wrote: post #37
gyrgtyn wrote: post #36

I, for one, would like to wake up when the sun is up, and go to sleep when the sun is down. Isn't this this the same website where everyone is familiar with Why We Sleep? Standard Time forever

Standard time isn't perfect though. The more west someone is in a time zone, the less sleep they often get because the sun goes down later in the evening. Some have estimated it to be as much as 20 minutes of sleep less, which is very significant over time. What we really need is for schools and work to start later in the day for a larger number of people so that the morning can be a time to sleep in, or if you are a…

> The more west someone is in a time zone, the less sleep they often get because the sun goes down later in the evening.

isn't this even worst in DST? Maybe I'm thinking about it backwards...

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#50

Post by mertd »

beart wrote: post #27
minikites wrote: post #20

I'm a fan of changing the clocks twice a year for the reasons nicely laid out in this article: 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 art…

why does school have to start at the same hour for the entire country?

If you shift school an hour later and subsequently office schedules an hour later as well, aren't you reinventing standard time but calling it something else?
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