I think China has only one time zone.
Because the time zones are there to reasonably align with sunrise and sunset. It’s not perfect, but better than being in full darkness in your area at noon GMT.
What “deadly” errors have occurred so far?
There is the danger that could result from a reversal of Coriolis Force.
People who live in one place all the time might look askance at the idea of their local “noon” being redesignated, say, 2200Z for the convenience of travelers.
Bad enough that Arizona residents cannot figure out how to reset their clocks (and Oregon and New Jersey residents can't figure out how to pump their own gas), but time zones and Daylight savings time serve valid, meaningful purposes! Why would you want a single timezone? And as a practical manner, image store hours community by community around the world on a 24-hour clock. Impossibly confusing.
Dang. And I just spent 15 minutes correcting things back from DST.
Yes, and we can go to a 24 hour clock, and maybe a ten day or twelve day week, to accommodate maximum numbers of factors or decimalization (whichever you prefer). And what’s the points of months? Heck, we could just have one number that integrates the time and date. It also will do away with that AD/BC stuff, and we can all be like Captain Kirk with Stardates.
And everyone will be miserable.
Then the government couldnt remind you that it has such complete control over your life, that is can oblige you to perform a meaningless task. Twice a year.
Ad we could start using the stardate calendar like they used on the Enterprise
Time Zones cause Global Warming.
You can’t be series!
I prefer peanut butter jelly time. We should set all our clocks to peanut butter jelly time, with a baseball bat.
People who live where time zones meet have no problem dealing with time. You can set time to whatever you want it to be that is convienent for you. I leave my clocks set to the same time year-round and never have a problem.
>> traveling to a new time zone, is an opportunity for mistakes and even deadly errors.
How so? Examples please.
If we didn’t use time zones, then would we work according to the clock or according to the sun? If we did work according to the sun, then would work schedules shift by a couple minutes each day? Or would people (on the east cost, for example) just wake up at 10 in the morning and drive to work at noon?
Time zones make sense. Setting the clocks forward and backwards by an hour for reasons that no longer exist is truly stupid.
If I remember correctly at one time all time was local. However after Railroads became the prime mode of transportation problems developed.
The original time zones were created to prevent errors. They are not perfect (especially if you live near the point the time changes) but it is reasonable to have define zones.
That’s the reason for Zulu time.
Because people would get up at whatever hour-that-is-on-the-clock that is necessary for them to get up at dawn. The foolishness of changing the clocks would be gone, but we would still have the foolishness of having to remember what time they go to work in Chicago/New York/Denver/Los Angeles.
Businesses would open at 6am in one time zone, 7 in another, 8, and 9 in others. Same for schools. People would get up at 4 Am in one zone, 7 in another. Same foolishness, different name.
Forget about teaching the public about “GMT” (UTC!). The public can barely handle one time, let alone two. Airline pilots, weather people and ham radio operators know and use UTC. Everyone else, not a chance.
I have seen magazine articles written about this very same subject almost fifty years ago. So far, no change.
Well, for one thing it would destroy the meaning of “five o’clock shadow”.