Posted on 03/23/2015 7:18:00 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It’s been taking place for nearly as long as I’ve been alive and I’m having a hard time recalling a single conversation with anyone who was an enthusiastic fan. The subject is daylight saving time, which crops up twice every year in nearly the entire nation, and is then promptly forgotten again once everyone gets their internal clocks mostly readjusted. But perhaps this is finally coming to an end as ten states debate dropping the practice, picking a time and sticking to it.
States across the country are taking a dim view toward daylight saving time. And some say it’s time to turn back the clock — so to speak.
Lawmakers in 10 states have proposed legislation challenging what, for many, is a twice-a-year headache, and one they just endured again earlier this month. The new bills would mostly have states pick a time … and stay on that time…
Elected officials in 10 states have proposed legislation that would opt their states out of daylight saving time including Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Washington.
The officials all cite different reasons from health to safety concerns. Some just consider the practice pointless and antiquated.
The “benefits” of daylight saving time are fairly dubious at best. It’s a trick we play on ourselves so that it will seem like there are more hours of sunshine after you get out of work or school for most of the year. In the winter the clocks are changed so the sun “comes up earlier” as you start your day. Of course, none of this changes the actual number of hours of sunlight or darkness… it just shifts the hours when most people are awake and working or playing.
Some of the arguments against doing this seem a bit overblown as well. Perhaps there are some studies which show that accidents increase when people’s sleep patterns are disrupted, but mostly it seems as if people just find it to be a big pain in the backside. I know that it hit me harder than usual this year and seems to be doing so increasingly as I age. (Yes, you may now get off my lawn.)
One of the biggest arguments in favor of sticking with this scheme is that changing back to a single standard would “create confusion” in commerce and transportation.
[Michael] Downing, though, says keeping track of a standard clock nationwide could become extremely difficult if each state starts adjusting its own time.
“Once individual states start to change their clocks in innovative ways, it’s no longer predictable to transportation, communication and broadcasters,” Downing said. “There starts to be real costs that start to accrue as a result.”
I agree that complications will increase if only a handful of states drop daylight saving time, but that gives the false impression that we don’t already have some confusion in the system as it is. Arizona never adopted the practice (aside from some of the Native American reservation lands) and yet people seem to travel there and do business. And the fact that we have multiple time zones in the country already provides for more than enough confusion. Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee are all broken up into sections which are in the eastern and central time zones. You can literally travel from one place to another without crossing a state line and have the clock change on you. But, again, we somehow manage to get business done without the world ending. People on the east coast know they have to wait a few hours in the morning before they can call a business in California and find anyone in the office. It’s a big country and we adjust to things like this.
This doesn’t need to be a federal issue. If the residents of some of the states want to stay with daylight savings, let them. But personally I’d rather just pick a time scheme and stick with it.
I don’t care if it is Standard Time or DLST... just leave it the same all the time. Pick one and leave it alone. We have enough change already without this kind of Tom foolery.
DLST in the winter makes little difference since the screwl buses start running as early as 0530 around here, a semi-urban area! Most people commute in the dark in the morning and the same in the evening. I used to go for days without seeing the house in the daylight. Standard time did no good at all for daylight hours in the winter. For me leaving DLST on year ‘round would be just fine but so would Standard time... just pick one and leave it alone.
I’m tired of change for its own sake and yes, stay off my lawn as well.
Doesn’t bother me, but it seems like an anachronism in 2015.
DLST or reseting clocks ... or both ?
Working folks that want to spend more quality time with their family’s love DST...
...don’t mess with it because the EBT card carrying perfect voter base finds it a ‘hassle’ to reset their clocks.
It’s about time...
Both, yeah—though I was thinking of clock setting as an issue.
Then again, I’m not too handy, so I stay away from older, used cars and the like.
I'd rather be on MST year-round. Even losing my hour of daylight in the evening.
Come on Florida! Do it. Spring time change messes me up for 2 weeks. Hate getting up in the dark.
Not true at all. In the summer, there is more daylight in the north (Barrow, Alaska has 80 days of continuous sunlight). The closer you get to the equator, the more uniform the days are year-round (around 12 hours of daylight, regardless of time of year).
I always thought it was a hoot to fly from Phoenix to Las Vegas in the summer because you “arrive in Vegas before you left Phoenix” thanks to the fact that AZ does not ever go on DLST and the flight is less than an hour!
Yes, every place on earth has the same hours of daylight a year. At the equator it is evenly distributed—12 hours every day. At the poles it is bunched together—6 months of the sun being continuously above the horizon followed by 6 months when the sun is continuously below the horizon.
Have it year round or don’t have it. It’s just big government screwing with us because they can.
I remember that! There were concerns that kids would get hit by cars. But I thought the argument was silly because schools changed attendance times to go to school earlier in the morning so that they could do a split day. Higher grades attending earlier and going home earlier, lower grades going in after lunch and staying later, so they came home in the dark.
I personally LOVE DST. It works very well for my personal internal clock, and I’m one of those who wishes they’d leave it that way. More of us would be able to enjoy the sunrise if it occured later in the morning lol!
I have a gut feeling about it.
That would mean you really went through a time-warp as AZ and Vegas have the same time during summer months! You scenario only works during the winter.
(And your scenario displays completely what the problems would be if a bunch of other states decided to either not have DST or have year-round DST. Confusion would abound.)
In the summer, Phoenix and Las Vegas are on the same time. Since AZ doesn't observe DST, when the clock moves forward for the Pacific Time Zone, it catches AZ at MST. Both are UTC -7 hours right now. It's the winter where AZ is an hour ahead, thus the arriving before leaving can occur.
FMCDH(BITS)
If you want more sunshine in the day, wake up earlier. If you want to avoid morning, like I do, sleep in. Don’t make the entire planet endure this crap.
Go Illinois
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