Official Real Time

[unixronin]

"Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ..." — er, to Official Real Time, upon this day when we do violence once again to our circadian clocks.

You know what I want to know?  Has anyone ever checked to see if there's more traffic accidents the Monday morning after DST begins?

Comments

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

I have a vague idea that it has been researched, and there are, in fact, more accidents both when DST begins and when it ends. However, I don't have cites, and I could be wrong.

[yndy.livejournal.com]

I could go look for the links, but I'm too tired.
I recall a cop friend telling me that the numbers of accidents are *significantly* higher in the morning the week after the 'lost hour' and significantly higher in the evening the week after the 'regained hour' b/c of exhaustion in the first case, and twilight driving in the second.

I know it's got to be online somewhere

[argonel.livejournal.com]

I have seen links to the studies, but I haven't looked into the methodology. IIRC traffic accidents are up by about 8% for the week following the time shift.

[skellington.livejournal.com]

This puts it at 6.6% increase the week after, and 1.5% decrease when we get the hour back:

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/03/300.asp

However, here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#Public_safety

Says that, depending on the study you pick, you get around a 1% reduction in fatal accidents, including a 5% reduction in pedestrian accidents, during the entire time DST is observed. (It also says that only in North America do we have problems with more accidents immediately after the switch. Perhaps we're more sleep deprived in general.)

There are other possible health effects including heart attacks, but more Vitamin D, etc.

[hrrunka]

Hmmm... I'm sure I've seen at least one UK-based survey showing the increase in morning accidents in the weeks following switch-overs at both ends of the year. I've also seen surveys saying that the number of early afternoon accidents decreases during the DST period. Of course we're far enough North here that it does make an appreciable difference to daylight hours.

I'm firmly in the "pick a time-zone and stick with it all year" camp, myself, and I don't much care whether it's an hour or two either side of mean solar time so long as it doesn't change. The change-overs do me no good.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I'm firmly in the "pick a time-zone and stick with it all year" camp, myself, and I don't much care whether it's an hour or two either side of mean solar time so long as it doesn't change.

That's pretty much my position too. Bad enough we have to keep track of all this timezone nonsense to start with — I personally think that in our increasingly global economy, we should abolish timezones altogether and use a single global timezone with a 24-hour clock — but if you're going to use timezones, then fer cryin' out loud MAKE UP YOUR DAMNED MIND, PICK ONE, AND STICK WITH IT. If you want to start work at your company an hour after dawn year round, then just start work an hour after dawn, don't fuck around with the definition of when dawn is.

[hrrunka]

You should have heard the conversations here at work today. Various folk have tele-conferences with their counterparts in the US, and of course the US changed to DST but the UK doesn't do the same 'til the end of the month. Is that 3pm UK-time, 9am Houston time, meeting now at 2pm UK-time, or still at 3pm UK-time but 10am Houston time. A wonderful recipe for chaos, and an execllent illustration of another down-side of the DST switch.

[luxobscura.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that bizarre little period of time when London local time and GMT are an hour apart!

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

Abolish timezones altogether? But then I'd have to go to work at 1600 and wouldn't get off until 0030! I'd miss all my favorite shows!

Wait a minute -- you didn't say the single global timezone had to be UTC. Never mind, we'll just make sure PST is the world standard. Or PDT, to save energy!

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Wait a minute -- you didn't say the single global timezone had to be UTC. Never mind, we'll just make sure PST is the world standard. Or PDT, to save energy!

Hey, wait — that's brilliant! PST is zone H; but what if we standardize the world on zone K? It's halfway across the Pacific — energy consumption there is almost zero!

[fatcook.livejournal.com]

Yet, one more reason I'm glad I live in Arizona.
Thank the gods!

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

So you're against saving energy?

Daylight Saving Time saves energy. The proof of that is, Congress extended it in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (and people say Bush & Cheney didn't care about saving energy! Ha!). It now covers almost two-thirds of the year; the next step will be to rename Standard Time "Daylight Wasting Time" and then eliminate it entirely, thus saving even more energy. After that, we can establish "Enhanced Daylight Saving Time," setting our clocks two hours ahead of current standard time. Eventually we'll save so much energy we can stop using fossil fuels completely and just run everything on time.
</silliness>

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Why stop there? If we set the clocks far enough ahead, we could start producing net energy from timeshifting! In fact, I want to know why we're not doing it right now! Why, if we just set all the clocks 168 hours ahead in a single step, nobody would even notice! Why isn't Congress doing this yet?

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Didn't we do something like that two centuries (or so) ago when we adjusted the Gregorian Calendar?

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

Yes, and next thing that happened was the Industrial Revolution. All that energy had to go someplace.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Nice!

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

By the gods, you're right! Let's call Steven Chu right now!

This isn't without historical precedent -- see ithildae's note below, and it's well known that during the Fascist era Italy's trains ran on time. Sadly, the technology that made this possible was deep-sixed after the war by the government and the oil companies.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Several years back, the traffic accidents were up the week after DST sleep deprivation by 7-9%, depending on the study, whether you are counting accidents, or fatalities.

The biggest proponent of DST today is the Chamber of Commerce. It turns out that people tend to go shopping more when it is daylight after work. That makes getting rid of the turkey more difficult politically, because you are going up against real money. It also means that many standard measures of effectiveness are "bent" toward keeping DST, on whatever pretext seem convenient.