Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk • Hacker News Board

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#81

Post by gpvos » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 12:27 PM UTC

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 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.

The entire reason we have summer/winter time is that changing the time is easier than changing business hours.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#82

Post by GoblinSlayer » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 12:46 PM UTC

nulbyte wrote: post #77

axaxs wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They literally can't stay on DST. Florida already basically passed this, but it's held up in Congress as is tradition. Check out the Sunshine Protection Act. So, right now states can't stay on DST because federal law doesn't currently allow it. It does however allow permanent standard time, and petitioning for change of time zone. So, I wish Georgia, Florida, et al would just give Congress a big middle finger by swit…

> So, I wish Georgia, Florida, et al would just give Congress a big middle finger by switching to permanent Atlantic Standard Time. Maybe then they'd realize how silly this all is. States can't unilaterally adopt a different time zone. The boundaries are regulated by the feds.

Then they can shift work hours :) who cares what numbers clock shows.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#83

Post by James_Henry » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 1:07 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #60

naniwaduni wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see what new steps are introduced. Even in the best case, you don't really manage simplify anything, you apply the same offsets, except now everyone on the west coast wakes up on one weekday and goes to sleep on the next, not just the ones who get to bed after midnight. The change happens right at the end of the business day, rather than outside business hours. Every day.

"Cool what are you doing Tuesday night?" "Uh do you mean... calendar Tuesday, or uh Tuesday Tuesday?" Repeated over half of the globe, forever. I do a lot of remote meetings with people all over the globe, I work for a remote company, and I do. not. want. this.

No one would be confused by the meaning of Tuesday night as night is defined by the sun and if it is paired with the word Tuesday then you automatically know what they are talking about.

There could be some confusion if you are talking with people far away, but that already exists. The sort of confusion that would come up would just be slightly different.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#84

Post by James_Henry » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

benrbray wrote: post #58

James_Henry wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll also have more car accidents, heart attacks, sleep deprivation, etc. People, especially adolescents, should be able to sleep in more and given societies current 9-5 scheduling, the sooner the sun goes down (by the clock) the more sleep that people generally get.

Additionally, the OP seems to indicate the increased accidents are due to issues we have adjusting to the time change. You can certainly argue we should get rid of the time change altogether, but 2-DST would have the same time changes as our current system. Maybe there's an increased risk of traffic accidents as a result of increased evening activity. But I'd argue that's a problem with our society's unhealthy depend…

While the article is specifically looking at the effects of the transition to DST, it references the fact that there are adverse effects of time zones besides just the transition or the use of cars. Here is one of their references: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mikhail_Borisenkov/publ...

Others have also attempted to estimate the amount of sleep of people in eastern vs western edges of time zones and they have found it to be some 20 minutes.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#85

Post by James_Henry » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

benrbray wrote: post #57

James_Henry wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll also have more car accidents, heart attacks, sleep deprivation, etc. People, especially adolescents, should be able to sleep in more and given societies current 9-5 scheduling, the sooner the sun goes down (by the clock) the more sleep that people generally get.

Anecdotally: in places like Michigan where it's dark by 6pm in the winters, darkness really has no correlation with sleeping hours. "2-DST" would actually make it easier for working people to align their sleep schedule with the daylight.

"2-DST" would make it so that people have to get up much earlier in the day though, right? From my experience, in places up north people find it harder to wake up early in the winter because the morning darkness (I'm sure the cold doesn't help either).

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#86

Post by GoblinSlayer » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 1:29 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #60

naniwaduni wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see what new steps are introduced. Even in the best case, you don't really manage simplify anything, you apply the same offsets, except now everyone on the west coast wakes up on one weekday and goes to sleep on the next, not just the ones who get to bed after midnight. The change happens right at the end of the business day, rather than outside business hours. Every day.

"Cool what are you doing Tuesday night?" "Uh do you mean... calendar Tuesday, or uh Tuesday Tuesday?" Repeated over half of the globe, forever. I do a lot of remote meetings with people all over the globe, I work for a remote company, and I do. not. want. this.

TV already does that. It has the date change somewhere at 6 hours.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#87

Post by GoblinSlayer » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 1:38 PM UTC

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…

>If everyone moved to UTC you wouldn't solve any real problems.

At least people will be less inclined to use local time for non-local schedule, and will be able to tell time unambiguously.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#88

Post by dooom » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:31 PM UTC

gpvos wrote: post #81

scrollaway wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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. The entire reason we have summer/winter time is that changing the time is easier than changing business hours.

Why would changing business hours be so complicated?

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#89

Post by throw0101a » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

beobab wrote: post #74

throw0101a wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as good idea as you may thing: * https://qntm.org/abolish Okay, it's "1700Z" and you're at work: are the folks at the Singapore office in yet? If New York's business hours are 14-22Z, what are Berlin's? Bangalore's? Tokyo's? Seattle's? At least with timezones you can do some simple +/- math and see if you end up in the typical '9-5L' range: * https://everytimezone.com But with only-UTC (as much I set my serv…

You still have to know exactly the same amount of information to know if someone is working or not, but you only have to know one piece of information per moment, because "what time is it now?" is the same for everyone. If everyone has the same frame of reference, you don't get coordinate translation errors. Going to work on Tuesday and coming home on Wednesday will be the new norm for about a third of the world.

> You still have to know exactly the same amount of information

This has been debated before:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902765

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#90

Post by scrollaway » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

gpvos wrote: post #81

scrollaway wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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. The entire reason we have summer/winter time is that changing the time is easier than changing business hours.

Uh, changing business hours is pretty simple, you know. Over here business hours routinely change during holidays for examples (various businesses open/close later or earlier depending on their client and employee needs). If it's easy for two weeks I don't see why it'd be harder for six months.