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posted by
martyb
on Saturday April 06 2019, @05:11PM
from the Everybody-Talks-About-It,-And-Finally-Somebody-Is-Doing-Something-About-It dept.
from the Everybody-Talks-About-It,-And-Finally-Somebody-Is-Doing-Something-About-It dept.
The Oregon Senate has passed a bill establishing permanent Daylight Saving Time in the state, and the Governor has signaled she supports the effort. If it passes the House (and possibly the US Congress, it is a bit ambiguous to me), it could end the semi-annual resetting of clocks which causes so much annoyance and increase of injury and deaths.
Personally speaking, I'd rather it settled on permanent Standard time than Daylight time, but as long as it is steady I think it's better than the current regime.
See also:
Texas efforts: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/03/05/1413228
Europe's efforts: http://fortune.com/2019/03/26/european-union-parliament-daylight-saving-time/
Mandatory XKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/1268/
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Oregon Senate Passes Bill for Permanent Daylight Saving Time
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In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:56AM (1 child)
From TFS:
Okay, let's have some straight talk here. I know the standard nerd perspective on all this is that DST is silly. And I somewhat agree. That said, everybody on both sides of this issue exaggerates the claims in their favor.
For a moment, let me play devil's advocate, because I think many people don't think this stuff through.
First, "increase of injury and deaths" sounds dire. And yes, I've seen the studies that show increased traffic accidents, etc. during the week or so of adjustment. BUT, I've never seen a study comparing those (relatively minor) increases to the effect of a permanent DST as proposed here, which basically means a huge number of people are driving to work in the dark and schoolchildren are riding their bus in the dark, etc. What's the bigger effect -- a week of grogginess while people adjust, or several months of darkness where people without their coffee have to navigate traffic? I know where I'd place my bet.
You know, we did try this before. Back in the early 1970s during the Energy Crisis, there was permanent DST over the winter at least one year. And traffic casualties went up. More importantly, I'm pretty sure the reason it was halted because there were significantly more schoolchildren fatalities as kids were walking to school and walking to bus stops in the dark, and they got hit. (Yes, I know several comments point out kids already do this at times -- but with permanent DST, even more will do it and for longer parts of the year.)
I'm not saying this is a fatal flaw (no pun intended) in the argument for permanent DST, but let's not pretend that the week of grogginess during transition is just going to magically disappear with no other potential impact of shifting to permanent DST.
So some might then propose standard time all year, and I don't have a major issue with that, though it does end up wasting a lot of good summer daylight recreational time in the evenings for a lot of people. I do have a major beef with those who argue that every business and organization should just adjust as they wish for the summer hours. Yes, some businesses already do it.
But take a moment and imagine the problems that begin to ensue if you don't move to DST for summer. One of the major driving recreational forces in the U.S. is sports. Kids play lots of sports. Stop DST, and sports games lose an hour for play after school. Now, you might say -- "Schools could just shift their schedules by an hour if they wanted!" And same for businesses, etc.
But then you run into parents whose work doesn't change for summer hours, but their kids schedules change for summer sports... and that mismatch creates numerous scheduling problems. And if businesses actually took the advice that some people have and adopt summer hours if they want, now a parent has to remember -- does the bank observe summer hours, but the dry cleaner doesn't, and oh, Timmy's soccer game is now effectively an hour earlier, and I can't get out of work because I have a meeting scheduled during out normal "don't change for summer" hours.
I'm not trying to exaggerate these problems, which will be worked out in the real world. I'm pointing out that permanent DST is stupid and potentially will be more dangerous than the limited transition effects all the DST haters complain about. And those who blithely just say, "If you really want to make use of summer evening time, your company or school or whatever can just shift its hours" tend to underestimate the complexities that could introduce. Right now, we have a coordinated shift that allows most people to get extra daylight time in the evening for recreation in the summer. And I, for one, appreciate that. But I also don't hate switching my clocks enough to have to drive to work in the dark for several months.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday April 07 2019, @07:27PM
There was certainly a lot of hand wringing and pearl clutching about it, but I have never seen any statistics to back that up. Further, in Oregon, many kids go to school in the dark with or without DST. Somehow standard time darkness is less dangerous than daylight saving darkness??!?
Do clocks set ahead emit 'darkons'? If we collect the darkons, can we achieve a negative energy density high enough to make warp drive work? ;-)