Make DST permanent!

Would you prefer permanent Daylight Savings Time or Standard Time?

  • DST

    Votes: 44 52.4%

  • ST

    Votes: 25 29.8%

  • Keep both (status quo)

    Votes: 8 9.5%

  • Don't care (apathetic)

    Votes: 7 8.3%
  • Total voters
    84
  • Poll closed .
jayhawk74 said:
I recently read that some of the states in New England also want to end DST but they also want to change New England from the Eastern time zone to the Atlantic time zone. Doing that would essentially make them year round DST.
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That actually is a way around the Federal law. And that report came out almost a decade ago, seems to be slowly getting traction for New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts to do so. Oh, the timezone is called Atlantic.
The basic details are, States are allowed to skip DST, however the State must utilize a "standard time". So the solution in New England is to use the Atlantic time which is one hour ahead of EST. And then skip DST changes.
I think Massachusetts already passed the law (I know it came up and was debated to some degree), but not positive, which says they will make the change as soon as the other two states do. Basically a trigger law.

Tim
 
Dana said:
I live in New England, where sunrise in my town is at 7:12am in 12/21. Since it gets light before sunset, I'm not driving to work in the dark. Ditto for where I went to school in NY state, where sunrise is 5 minutes later. But with DST it'd be dark, and in both places I get home before sunset even without DST.

Granted there will always be people who are traveling in the morning dark, there would be a lot more driving in the dark if we had wintertime DST... and the accident statistics when it was tried bore that out. And people didn't like it, otherwise they'd still be doing it.
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Dana,

Boston sunrise is 7:10am and sunset is 4:14pm; which is 9 hours and 4 minutes. Not many jobs will allow you to arrive at 7:40am, and leave at 3:40pm (assume 8 hours working, with no lunch), let alone commute time.
As for trying DST in the 70s. Please provide actual statistics showing the increase in deaths. Because from what I have read, the numbers were actually statistically insignificant, as in there was not enough of a change to be able to make any inference.
Did people hate it? Yes, and they were very vocal about it. Did they latch onto any excuse they can to end it? Yes.

Lastly, not sure about where you live. But the numbers of kids today who "walk to school" like I did in the 70s, is way down.

Tim
 
tspear said:
Dana,

Boston sunrise is 7:10am and sunset is 4:14pm; which is 9 hours and 4 minutes. Not many jobs will allow you to arrive at 7:40am, and leave at 3:40pm (assume 8 hours working, with no lunch), let alone commute time.
As for trying DST in the 70s. Please provide actual statistics showing the increase in deaths. Because from what I have read, the numbers were actually statistically insignificant, as in there was not enough of a change to be able to make any inference.
Did people hate it? Yes, and they were very vocal about it. Did they latch onto any excuse they can to end it? Yes.

Lastly, not sure about where you live. But the numbers of kids today who "walk to school" like I did in the 70s, is way down.

Tim
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Also why would driving in the morning while it is dark be more dangerous than driving at night when it's dark? Sounds like people were at best cherry picking stats.
 
Fo my family, darkness in the morning is no big deal. Darkness in the evening is a bummer!

It's currently DST now, (right?...I always forget which is DST and which is standard).... My three kids have all biked/walked to elementary and middle school....the middle school students in my county are currently going to school in the dark and have been since August...while the high schoolers will be coming home not long before sunset when the time changes next month.
 
tspear said:
Boston sunrise is 7:10am and sunset is 4:14pm; which is 9 hours and 4 minutes. Not many jobs will allow you to arrive at 7:40am, and leave at 3:40pm (assume 8 hours working, with no lunch), let alone commute time.
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I work 7 to 4, and have a 15 minute commute. Not that unusual.

EdFred said:
Also why would driving in the morning while it is dark be more dangerous than driving at night when it's dark? Sounds like people were at best cherry picking stats.
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A lot of people, like me, don't have to drive to work in the dark at all.

tspear said:
Lastly, not sure about where you live. But the numbers of kids today who "walk to school" like I did in the 70s, is way down.
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Even kids who take the school bus are still waiting by the side of the road... in the dark? My kids took the bus... but walked to the bus stop.
 
Brad W said:
Fo my family, darkness in the morning is no big deal. Darkness in the evening is a bummer!

It's currently DST now, (right?...I always forget which is DST and which is standard).... My three kids have all biked/walked to elementary and middle school....the middle school students in my county are currently going to school in the dark and have been since August...while the high schoolers will be coming home not long before sunset when the time changes next month.
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DST is March-Nov.

This has all been done before. Full time DST was initiated in 1974, and ended a year later when public support dropped and Florida school kids died. Plus bonus Nixon stuff.

This is one of those issues that will never make everyone happy. This turns into eastern side vs. western side of every time zone complaining they don't like dark mornings or dark afternoons.


During the 1973 oil embargo by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, in an effort to conserve fuel, Congress enacted a trial period of year-round DST, beginning January 6, 1974, and ending April 27, 1975. The trial was hotly debated. Those in favor pointed to increased daylight hours in the summer evening: more time for recreation, reduced lighting and heating demands, reduced crime, and reduced automobile accidents. The opposition was concerned about children leaving for school in the dark and the construction industry was concerned about morning accidents. After several morning traffic accidents involving schoolchildren in Florida, including eight children who were killed, Governor Reubin Askew asked for the year-round law to be repealed.

Over three months from December to March, public support dropped from 79% to 42%. Some schools moved their start times later. Shortly after the end of the Watergate scandal caused a change of administration, the act was amended in October 1974 to return to standard time for four months, beginning October 27, 1974, and ending February 23, 1975, when DST resumed. When the trial ended in October 1975, the country returned to observing summer DST (with the aforementioned exceptions).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_United_States​
 
tspear said:
That actually is a way around the Federal law. And that report came out almost a decade ago, seems to be slowly getting traction for New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts to do so. Oh, the timezone is called Atlantic.
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If Maine isn't on board, they'd be an island of Eastern time situated on the 'wrong' side of a couple of Atlantic time states.
 
Dana said:
I work 7 to 4, and have a 15 minute commute. Not that unusual.
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Around here it is. 8 or 9 starting time and leaving at 5 is standard practice. As I work on the busiest artery in the city and on occasion have gotten up early and come in, I notice inbound traffic doesn't get heavy until 730-800 and then at 1730 it stacks up big time going outbound.
 
While we’re @ fixing the amount sunlight, any ideas on getting 27 hours into a day? ;)
 
Salty said:
It in no way makes sense, and one is not better than the other for anything. Nobody is forced to get up at a certain time on the clock. If you want to shift your day for the sun, do it. If you want to get up earlier, or later, who cares what the number is, just do it. You could make sunset be 11pm and still go to bed at 12pm and “get to sleep at a reasonable time”.

I’m unaware of any laws what time on the clock dial you can go to bed or wake up.
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Yeah, but then there are all of the other people, businesses, employers, service providers,...etc. that you need to interact with. I'm guessing that most will just continue on by doing whatever they do at whatever time they do that based on whatever the clock says. Most of us, to varying degrees have those interactions dictating when we do a lot of the things that we do, so we can't simply choose when we get up without creating a new set of challenges for ourselves.
 
MichaelRuiz said:
Isn’t it interesting how an industry could make that decision for us all… I can’t say that I have taken a train to Chicago. Although, I would like to try the scenic one that goes from Chicago to San Francisco some day.. :).
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This is partially true in that the railroads drove the use of standardized time, but the fact is that as the nation became more integrated, we needed to have a collective agreement on what time it is everywhere. Otherwise, how could you schedule a business phone call, for example, with someone in another city? People used to literally say "is the train leaving at 6pm New York time or 6pm Philadelphia time (which were locally about 15 minutes apart in "clock time"). Imagine if we had to do the same with Zoom calls?
 
I love being professionally disinterested. I'm retired. I get up when I want and go to bed when I want. I play outside when it's comfortable and stay indoors when it is lousy outside. I only fly VFR these days (even though I have an IFR rating) and given the terrain around me, I don't like VFR at night in the single engine plane that is in my hangar. The biggest hassle with switching time paradigms is having to reset clocks on the microwave, the stove, the air fryer and the wall clock. My watch pays attention to the time on my phone so it self adjusts. Overall, this is one of the things I really don't spend any energy fussing over. I like it that way.
 
Mileage said:
This is partially true in that the railroads drove the use of standardized time, but the fact is that as the nation became more integrated, we needed to have a collective agreement on what time it is everywhere. Otherwise, how could you schedule a business phone call, for example, with someone in another city? People used to literally say "is the train leaving at 6pm New York time or 6pm Philadelphia time (which were locally about 15 minutes apart in "clock time"). Imagine if we had to do the same with Zoom calls?
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It is the collective agreement that I was alluding to. In my opinion, Zulu worldwide is the better choice. As you can see in post #100, we added one more to the collective agreement for Zulu. Now if we can get the other 300+ million of us (or at least our leaders in Congress) to agree on this subject, we are good to go :).

I am imagining trying to schedule that Zoom call with not only others in other parts of the U.S/world, but also in trying to schedule it with folks on the ISS or maybe even on a lunar base in the future. Wouldn't that be something - just say meeting is at 21:00 Zulu and that's it.
 
Mileage said:
This is partially true in that the railroads drove the use of standardized time, but the fact is that as the nation became more integrated, we needed to have a collective agreement on what time it is everywhere.
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IIRC, China has standardized time. No separate time zones...the entire span on the country is on one zone. Believe is spans over a longitude range equal to or greater than the CONUS, which has four.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Arm3 said:
Let’s just split the difference between ST and DST.

Afghanistan has a local time of Z + 4:30 and that place seems to be working out well. Let’s try it here.
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India same, on the half.
 
I really don't understand all the fuss. Am I the only one that likes the change? Seems like there are much more important things to discuss and worry about. Heck these days almost all the clocks change themselves, you wake up and don't even know it happened!
 
Stevel said:
Yeah, but then there are all of the other people, businesses, employers, service providers,...etc. that you need to interact with. I'm guessing that most will just continue on by doing whatever they do at whatever time they do that based on whatever the clock says. Most of us, to varying degrees have those interactions dictating when we do a lot of the things that we do, so we can't simply choose when we get up without creating a new set of challenges for ourselves.
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Exactly. If EVERYONE heeded by summer/winter hours (businesses used to do that for the express purpose of saying FU to the time change) then who cares. But then why continue the silliness? I think exactly one poster, the one before me, likes the time change.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Exactly. If EVERYONE heeded by summer/winter hours (businesses used to do that for the express purpose of saying FU to the time change) then who cares. But then why continue the silliness? I think exactly one poster, the one before me, likes the time change.
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I meant to ask where you grew up that had Summer/Winter hours back when you first mentioned that. I'm guessing that it was at least as far North as you are now. In the Southern part of the State, (or at least the part of it that I was exposed to), Summer/Winter hours would be a foreign concept. I do like the idea, but it would be a new thing to quite a few of us.

For reference, in case it is further back than my experience would cover, I started paying attention to things like this when I began using public transportation to get to school in the 1975/76 school year.
 
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