Map: The states in favor of daylight saving time all year long
What’s in the way of making daylight saving time permanent
In the past six years, 19 states have made efforts to move to year-round daylight saving time. So what’s in the way?
I don't care what the offset is. it's just fucking numbers. if I'm getting up at something called four versus something called six it doesn't make a difference to me. I just don't want the numbers to CHANGE twice a year
Many people might not know. If your state wants to stop changing their clocks, they can do it right now. The problem is that a lot of vocal people want permanent DST which (literally) takes an act of congress.
I think SDT is the right way to go, but mainly I want the clocks to stop changing. If you want the time changes to stop, talk to your state legislators. Once the clocks stop changing, then we can convince our employers to allow shifting work hours.
Read an interesting article that said insurance companies lose tons of money because of time changes. Animals supposedly get used to traffic being low/high at certain times of day (based on the sun cause they don't have watches). So when the time changes, they keep their same routine and end up causing more accidents while crossing roads they are used to being empty.
The week after we move clocks forward in the spring, thereby "losing an hour", there is a marked increase in car collisions and heart attacks.
I know some think permanent standard time is best. But I respectfully disagree, for several reasons.
First, the argument for standard time is that we need the light in the morning to wake up. And, sure, that would be great. But with standard time, most people are already getting up in the dark. Sunrise only moves to 7am or later around here. A lot of people are already up earlier to get kids on buses (my bus went at 6:45) and to work starting between 7 and 8.
Meanwhile, look at what happens to evening light. Sunsets will go from 6 to 5, and many will travel home in the dark, or simply have no light when the get home, with hours to go before sleep.
The fact is, winter just doesn’t have enough light to go around. So we have to pick our poison. I’d rather get home with some light.
Second, no one considers what would happen in the summer. Here, sunrise would come at 5 am, too early and disruptive to sleep. If light would wake us up better in the winter, than it would wake us up too soon in the summer.
Third, people say we tried it in the 70s and everyone hated it. But when it happened, we didn’t just stay on daylight savings, we switched in the fall, and then back in January, an abrupt change in the darkest time of the year rather than the gradual change it should have been since fall.
And even then, many people lived it. There were people that didn’t, sure, but it is wrong to say it was universally hated.
But make we just need to compromise. Move the clocks 30 minutes and be done with it.
But make we just need to compromise. Move the clocks 30 minutes and be done with it.
I was with you until this. But that's because I'm a programmer and time stuff is hard enough before you start using minutes instead of hours.
I think putting the sun's zenith at 1pm would be better year round. Even with that my kids still wake up before dawn starting in October, and I'd rather have daylight when I'm awake.
I’m sure it’s already figured out. India is already 30 minutes off the rest of the world.
But I was mostly joking. Because I want the madness to end.
But I totally agree. 1 pm is mush more the meridian of most people’s day how we typically actually live.
I'd rather have light in the evening but I honestly just want to get rid of the changing.
I hate standard time, but I’d still rather stop changing even with it.
The question is basically: do you want school and work to start earlier or later?
Why change the time for everyone when you can just adjust “working” hours. People who do shift work or work retail and other non- white-collar jobs are collateral damage. Roofers and farmers change their start and stop times baes on light and heat conditions.
Just start at a different time. Time is based (roughly) on the global position from a reference mark. Stop fucking with it.
This only works if everyone in the country starts and stops work/school at the exact same time which isn't possible.
On permanent dst sunrise in Boise would be at 9:20 during the first half of January.
It'd be like 9:50am here in the Netherlands and I still support permanent DST. The daytime is basically our employer's time anyway, I'd rather not waste any more precious daylight on that part of the day. It really sucks getting off work and it's already dark outside. Hard not to crash when it's pitch black out by 5:30 pm.
And sunrise would be 5am in June. And you ignore that sunset would be 6:20pm instead of 5:20.
The fact is, Boise gets just 9 hours of daylight. Pick your poison. I’d rather the light when I might be able to enjoy it.
And what time is your sunset in first weeks of January on standard time?
I love how a purely factual statement somehow receives as many downvotes as it does upvotes ... People are weird.
People arguing for our against really need to give their latitude. I'd imagine the further north you go, the more you are in favor of permanent dst.
I'm at 56°N. DST does exactly fuck all but mess with my sleep. I'd rather just stay at one time all fuckin year. In winter it doesn't make a fuckin lick of difference if the sun rises at 8 or 9 or 10, it's dark when I leave the house, and it's dark well before I get back in.
I used to live at 49°N and that was actually worse.
41N.
And yes, this is true. But why should we be denied just because those closer to the tropics don’t have a problem? Or perhaps time zones should be rather diagonal so the the north can get later sunsets.
And those wanting standard time should also give their latitude. And rather or not someone is on the east or west end of the time zone makes a huge difference. Those further east in the time zone sees earlier sunrises and sunsets and are also more apt for daylight savings. For instance, much of New England would probably be better off in the Atlantic time zone. As it is under DST, the sun rises before 5am in Portland, ME, and EST would put sunrise before 4am! Sadly, being in the same time as certain business centers like New York and Boston (Maine wants to be the same time as Boston, and Boston the same as NYC) have made many bad time zone boundaries.
Perm DST and cut the time zones in half. Sunset should be within ~15 mins from one side of the time zone to the other; not a 45+ min difference.
The opposite. For northern latitudes, the time switch is actually somewhat beneficial. People generally don't love waking up and going to work/school/whatever in the pitch black. DST doesn't magically "save daylight." The total amount is daylight is the same for either.
The only real solution is permanent Standard Time. Local businesses and governments already shift their business hours as they see fit for other reasons, so keeping "summer hours" and "winter hours" is totally reasonable.
While we might not love going to work in pitch black, we don’t care to have all our evening in it, either. As you say, the total amount of daylight is the same, so we have to pick our poison. I’d rather have more light in the evening. I will hate the 5pm darkness that comes tomorrow.
Morning our schedules is no better than moving out clocks.
I don't mind dark mornings, since I'm already at work by 7am each day. But not being able to walk/bike in a park safely each afternoon, not being able to cook outside, or hang out with friends in the daylight is a bit sad. And also SAD as in the disorder since we are now inside during the only hours of daylight...
Standard time is superior for the simple reason that the sun is highest in the sky at noon.
UTC is superior. Everywhere sets their local schedule by what they need to like if the sun actually matters to them, and it gets rid of confusion. The real issue is that people have some idea that work should start at 8am or whatever in all areas. Or that 5 o’clock should be happy hour. That’s not helpful in any meaningful way.
Exactly, people need to get over the fixation on the number the clock shows.
Screw all notions of modern time... return to Japanese Time
Daylight and Nighttime, each divided into 6 periods, varying in length based on the season and labelled in order of 6, 5, 4, 9, 8, 7. Longer workdays when the sun is out, shorter workdays when it's dark!
States can only move to permanent Standard time without congressional approval, and when you consider that congress couldn't agree who their own leader was for 22 days, there's no hope getting them to agree on something like DST.
The real question, if states are serious about getting rid of the change to DST, why didn't they just pick standard time? No approval is needed to switch to full standard time.
Because people prefer the extra daylight in the evening which is why everyone wants DST hours.
Because people prefer the [lack of] daylight in the [morning] which is why everyone [hates] DST hours.
Is that actually what you meant?
I really wish people would stop spinning DST as if it gives us any more daylight than Standard time. It's literally just rotating a circular instrument by 30 degrees and whitewashing it with a nice-sounding name.
Red herring to appear like they are doing something for the people. As was pointed out below, we tried year round DST in the 70s and people hated it so much we went back to switching our clocks. It seems that year round standard time would make the best compromise, but that would be doing something, rather than just appearing to do things.
Simple. Just keep one. I prefer daylight saving.
More simple, everyone on UTC. Everything else is silly.
On permanent dst sunrise in Boise would be at 9:20 during the first half of January.
The only way it makes sense to do this is at the federal level so the whole country changes at once. Doing it at the state level is stupid, confusing and frankly just a waste of time. This country has very real and serious problems it needs to deal with, and daylight savings time is not one of them.
Let's not fix anything until the things we won't fix get fixed.
And even further, doing the easy stuff will help you get the hard stuff done.
Except hasn't it been well-proved that standard time is a better stopping state?
I would like to ask a question, and hopefully someone much smarter can explain why it is or isn't a possibility.
Why is it that an automated DST couldn't be implemented? In my head I'm imagining a time keeping ability that automatically adjusts, every day, to capitalize on the amount of daylight that is in a day during any given time of year. The amount of adjustment would be so incremental as to not even be noticeable really, to one's everyday routines.
If clocks auto-adjusted each day, by milliseconds or whatever micro-amounts necessary, I feel like that would be so much easier than an abrupt 1 hour difference which throws everyone off because of how jarring it is.
I don't like DST, but I can't help but wonder. If we HAVE to have it, then why can't it be better. I feel like we have the technology to be able to figure out a superior way of doing this.
I believe this is how Google handles leap years and leap seconds on all of their servers. They kind of smear the difference out over a period of time so the difference isn't noticeable. Great for day to day activities, but people doing scientific measurements or other precision date work would probably have to use their own solution.
Not to sound negative towards those groups who use precision date work, but I think they should probably be using their own solutions anyway, and are probably more than capable of figuring out good solutions on their own. In my opinion, that definitely isn't a reason why the rest of us shouldn't have an agreeable (automated) standardization.
Are the potential difficulties that these specific groups could face so drastic/detrimental that it just wouldn't work for some reason or another?
So everyone would have to throw out their clocks?
No, but you'd probably want to update them more frequently. Pretty much everything I use to tell time (phone, watch, computer) is automatic anyway.
We already tried permanent dst in the 70s and people hated it so much they switched back to changing the clocks. Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
As I said above, it was implemented incredibly stupidly. They didn’t just stay on daylight savings, allowing the sunrise and sunset to gradually change. Instead they changed in the fall to standard time and the AGAIN at the beginning of January back to daylight savings. They abruptly changed at the darkest time of the year.
Even then, it’s an exaggeration to say people hated it. Many hated it, but some others loved it. It’s also a different world. More people start at 7 or 8 rather than 9. And no doubt some people hated the horrible way they initially implemented it.
I've spent my whole life with the time changing, I'm adapted now and expect being able to sleep in later when it stays darker out, I don't want this to change
Just so you guys know, Mexico did away with DST last year. It's been great not changing the clock twice a year.
Come on US... Stop dragging your feet.
But dragging their feet is the only thing our government is good at now. What would they have left?