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70% of Americans Dislike Daylight Saving Time (cbsnews.com) 269

Posted by EditorDavid from the falling-backwards dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a Yahoo News 360 report on Americans who hate Daylight Saving Time: A push to end the semiannual clock shift, which has been shown to correlate with negative health and productivity outcomes, is gaining steam throughout the country. Most of the momentum is behind a movement to make daylight saving time permanent so the "spring forward" lasts all year long. A number of states including California, Florida, Washington and Oregon have taken legislative steps to do just that, but an act of Congress would be needed for any of those changes to go into effect.
Meanwhile, CBS News reports: Most people across the country will see their clocks roll back an hour this weekend as nearly eight months of daylight saving time come to an end. It is part of a twice-a-year ritual that most want to stop. Seven in 10 Americans prefer not to switch back and forth to mark daylight saving time, a new poll shows.
The poll also shows that 33% of Americans younger than 45 prefer the current system of switching clocks twice a year -- compared to just 24% of Americans 45 or older.
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70% of Americans Dislike Daylight Saving Time More

70% of Americans Dislike Daylight Saving Time

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  • The only reason nothing changes means money interests don't want it to change. So, which businesses or billionaires would care enough to oppose getting rid of it?

    • I think we all complain that it's too dark do do anything fun outside when I get home from work. And that's true. But it's not entirely the fault of daylight savings time. The day got shorter. So it's going to be gloomy at one end or the other of your work day.

      The thing is most of us really haven't done the A/B test to see which end of the day we prefer to have dark. We just have lived with Daylight savings. So the only thing we have to complain about is it's dark in the early evening. It's very like

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        People prefer to have the evenings light. That's why all the proposals are to make daylight savings time permanent, not standard time.

        Problem is, there's evidence that it's better for your health to have the morning light. Your brain doesn't like waking up before it's light out.

        People like to cite a rise of strokes and traffic accidents around time changes, but so far as I'm aware, there isn't any evidence about the overall hazard of changing versus not changing time.

        Naturally, you would wake up a bit earli

        • People prefer to have the evenings light.

          ...and that is exactly why we have DST. Up here in Alberta which is at the same latitude as the UK and Ireland that one hour shift in the summer means that the sun rises about 5am and sets around 10pm. Without the shift, it would rise at 4am and set at 9pm giving us shorter evenings and more difficulty sleeping.

          However, if we stuck on DST year-round in the winter the sun would rise about 10am and set about 5pm so still no light in the evening and you would be getting up and going to work in pitch darkne

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        I think we all complain that it's too dark do do anything fun outside when I get home from work.

        This is Slashdot! Fun and outside are incompatible concepts. The Day Star, it burns me!

    • I mentioned this elsewhere, but retailers want the extra hour of daylight because it's an extra hour of shopping in the evening. They've run numbers that show their sales go down without it.
    • Everyone wants to change it until they realize they'd be on Winter Time all year round.

  • Noon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ebonum ( 830686 ) on Sunday November 03, 2019 @07:29AM (#59374562)

    Noon should be as close to solar noon as is reasonably possible. This means (for the continental US) we would stay on winter time all year. It should not be possible for a location in the continental US to have solar noon occurring close to 2pm. (example: Odessa, Tx in August 2019)

    The time and the sun should stay in sync. If you want school to start an hour later, then make school start at 10am instead of 9am. Don't shift the day an hour because some teenagers can't wake up.

    • Not necessarily. DST is used to shift the available daylight to make it more usable.

      In summer, we want longer evening. In winter, brighter mornings.

      Taking Ireland as an example, in summer the sun rises at 4am and sets at 10pm. If we were to keep in winter time, this would be 3am and 9pm. Summer time makes sense here.

      In winter, if we were to keep summer time, the sun would rise at 10am and set at 4pm. So we shift to have to sun rise at 9am, which make sense in winter.

      I don't want the sun not coming up t

      • Re: Noon (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Sunday November 03, 2019 @09:32AM (#59374768) Homepage

        Not necessarily. DST is used to shift the available daylight to make it more usable.

        In summer, we want longer evening. In winter, brighter mornings.

        So, ummm.... get up an hour earlier?

        Noon has a scientific definition. Your alarm clock doesn't.

        • When setting a clock to noon you are setting it according to one particular line of longitude. Most of the world don't live near the line of longitude that defines noon, and some can actually live over an hour away from it.

          So noon, in modern society, has nothing to do with the location of the sun in the sky.

        • So, ummm.... get up an hour earlier?

          Todays word is Myopic. Its official definition is Joce640k.

          Issues that dont effect you.. like frost on roads... yeah.

      • I'd prefer the sky was dark by 9 in the summer and the sun up when I'm driving to work. Screw the late risers.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by quetwo ( 1203948 )

      The problem is we are beholden to the business rules of "8-5". The world starts at 8pm, regardless of it is light or dark. The time people go back to home and end their work day is at 5pm, regardless of if it is dark or not. When sun sets at 4pm (and earlier!) in December, getting some of that time back so you aren't stuck in the dark all the time helps. It's easier to change what 5pm is defined as, than to change every business and process to use something like 4pm.

      • All that could easily be changed.

        Dolly Parton would have to re-record the record ("working eight to four"), radio stations could play it for a week, job done.

      • 8-5?

        Remind me not to work when you work.

        Standard day is 9-5 here. And that includes lunch.

        • Interesting. My job is 7:30 to 4:00. I used to have one that ran 7:00 to 3:30. So I've never thought much of daylight savings time. It's more accurately go to work in the dark time.

          Here, sunset in winter is a bit after 4 PM. There isn't much daylight to save.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

      I know I'm nitpicking but there is no winter time. There is summer time and standard time.

      • In Ireland it's Irish Standard Time (IST is end March to end October, so 7 months) and "Winter Time" or Daylight Saving Time.

    • The time needs to stay on regular time, not permanent daylight savings time. I don't get the push for permanent daylight savings time. I guess these people don't get up early.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )
        The push for permanent daylight savings time comes from simple the fact that most people would rather lose an hour of daylight in the morning than have the sun set earlier, often citing that in the winter their morning commute is often in darkness already, so in abolishing DST, why not pick the more personally desirable option?

    • You're close to recognising the real issue. That is that 'business hours' are 09h-17h, which isn't centred around mid-day. If we both had no DST and shifted 'business hours' to 08h-16h then things would be balanced. As it is it's easier to go to permanent DST rather than require all shops and other businesses to change signage, get their staff to make the change, inform customers etc.

      I know there'll still be some that argue for 'more evening daylight' despite the fact that the very latitudes that migh

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      Noon should be as close to solar noon as is reasonably possible.

      Why? I mean, seriously, why? Noon is whenever makes the most people happy to set it. It's a completely arbitrary convention, and the obsession of a few autists shouldn't even factor in.

  • And 70% of Slashdotters dislike this post (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AntisocialNetworker ( 5443888 ) on Sunday November 03, 2019 @07:31AM (#59374566)

    Twice a year, regular as clockwork, someone posts their dislike of DST. What a waste of time!

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday November 03, 2019 @07:34AM (#59374570)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • https://youtu.be/XZGs5Im9f8Q [youtu.be]

      No more people die as a result of the clock change than would have died anyway.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luthair ( 847766 )
        Except that we also know the time change increases the number of fatal car accidents.

        • When measured narrowly enough to cause some of the accidents to land in one statistical bin instead of the other it creates a numerical artifact that you describe.

          But the number of accidents is actually the same. The artifact also causes lower numbers in nearby bins.

          The case for increased heart attacks is better, because some people might actually be losing days or weeks, but it turns out the number of increased heart attacks and stokes caused by the short term stress of changing clocks doesn't change the n

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Nobody knows how many people would die by not changing. It could well be more.

    • It adds daylight, and there's been plenty of studies that show people shop more when the suns out. A big part of what's keeping DST around is retailers wanting that extra hour for shopping in the day.
    • It's astonishing that a day with 25 hours in it has more heart attacks.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by geek ( 5680 )

      It kills people twice a year and repealing it is something that a super majority of Americans support. Yet no one in Congress will draft a bill.

      Says a lot, doesn't it?

      Congress wont draft a bill for this unless it hurts Trump somehow.

  • Once again, bad title (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ddtmm ( 549094 ) on Sunday November 03, 2019 @07:53AM (#59374604)
    Im pretty sure it’s the time change they don’t like, not DST. Pretty much every forum I’ve read indicates most people would prefer DST all year round
    • Granted, i'm a morning person (rarely sleep past 5, even on days off), but I don't understand why people would want DST all year. Why would you want to go to work/school in the dark?

      • For half the planet, it will be dark in the morning and evening in winter.

        E.g. here in Germany, in winter, the sun doesn't come up until after 8:30, and is down before 16:30.

        And in the summer, even WITH DST, the sun can be up until 21:00! And rises in the middle of the night. Making it hard to sleep unless you just black-out your windows. (We have rolling shutters for that, but not upstairs in city apartments.)

        If you live in the arctic circle, it's even worse.

        Granted, it's much less of a problem in the US,

        • I live pretty far north as well, so that's about the same time the sun rises and sets here. I really don't care either way, and the the time change doesn't bother me. I can see your point, though.

          Jus thinking out loud.

        • >"For half the planet, it will be dark in the morning and evening in winter."

          In fairness, the article is about America. Nobody is suggesting getting rid of a time change should occur anywhere else. There are many other places where it makes more sense.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luthair ( 847766 )
        Personally I'd rather it was dark before work than after because I'm not going outside to do anything before work anyway.

      • Why would you want to go to work/school in the dark?

        So it's not dark when I leave work?

    • >"Im pretty sure itâ(TM)s the time change they donâ(TM)t like, not DST. Pretty much every forum Iâ(TM)ve read indicates most people would prefer DST all year round"

      Bingo. I don't think ANYONE likes changing time. It needs to stop. It should have stopped a long time ago. People do NOT hate Summer time, they hate changing to and from it twice a year.

      The only valid question on the table is do we want to stay on Summer time all year or Winter time all year. Most everyone I have talked to

      • People do NOT hate Summer time, they hate changing to and from it twice a year.,

        Changing the clocks is a mere 10 minute annoyance, well worth the months of having better light. I suspect plenty of people are only noticing the first part, but take the second for granted.

        • >"Changing the clocks is a mere 10 minute annoyance,"

          It has little to do with a 10 minute annoyance to adjust a dozen clocks, and more like a 10 day adjustment period to get sleep cycles normalized again. For some people, it takes even longer (especially for people who already have sleep disorders).

          >"well worth the months of having better light."

          It is not "better light", it is "different light"- more light in the early morning when most can't appreciate it. So for most of us, it means going to work

    • That would be inconsistent with the way the rest of the world does it. Time zones are based on geographic distance from the grand meridian and the east coast of the US, for example, is supposed to be GMT-5. I don't like the idea of making it GMT-4 on a permanent basis.

  • https://youtu.be/XZGs5Im9f8Q [youtu.be]

    It's important to watch the whole video to understand why some people seem to think so (basically not looking at all of the data).

    • anyway. e.g. later in the week

      This ignores the long term effects of the yearly changes. While those haven't been studied in detail, shift work has, and has been shown to hurt people's health. Schedule changes to sleep in general have severe long term health consequences.

      And this is before we do any research into whether the heart attacks were more severe, or if those few extra days might have made the difference between someone going to the hospital or not.
  • what i would have liked to do is set them back only 30 minutes, and then next spring not touch them, and every body did it this way and then LEAVE THE DAMN CLOCKS ALONE!!!
    split the difference is the only reasonable solution
  • Then once the people realize what no clock change implies, they will want it back.

    70 percent want it changed, having no more clock changes / DST. So 30 percent want DST. about half of those who want to get rid of DST want standard time, the other half want summer time. Seems about 30% for each. Great way to get everyone unhappy is what Europe is doing, first voting to keep or abolish DST, then ask if people want standard or summer time... It's likely only one third each...

  • It's a week ago we changed time in Europe and here too is there a group of people wishing this bi-annual time shift to end.
    This time the discussion is worse because a high ranking official of the EU decided too many people were against the shift and cancelled the legal basis on which the countries agreed to coordinate the day and hour of shift.
    This can obviously cause havoc when different countries start to use different time systems.

    The reason many people are against is that some think they twice a yea

  • I say, people who deliberately make logically fallacious statements, should be cast out from society.

    I personally see DST a stupid crutch.
    But if we go by the standards of what >70 of Americans liked or disliked, we would be exactly in the shithole of ripoffs and lying politicians we are in.
    Frankly, it is statistically more likely.that something is good for Americans, if they dislike it.

    • But if we go by the standards of what >70 of Americans liked or disliked, we would be exactly in the shithole of ripoffs and lying politicians we are in.

      Bullshit. The electoral college has only disagreed with the popular vote five times in history, and one of those times got us a Bush and one of those times got us Trump. The majority is clearly wiser than you think. Polls showed Sanders beating Clinton in the primary before she stole it with the aid of DWS and the DNC, and they also showed that Sanders could defeat Trump. Most Americans were opposed to slavery, as well, but a minority were able to keep that going for quite some time. It's interference with

  • Essentially this is a proposal to eliminate a timezone almost completely. Eastern will become Atlantic Time, Central becomes Eastern, Mountain becomes Central, and Pacific becomes Mountain. This means that Indianapolis and Halifax will be in the same Timezone. The only parts of Pacific that would remain would be British Columbia and the Yukon Territories in Canada and Alaska.

    People do not like it because they cannot plan ahead. We know it is going to happen so go to bed early or something. Sleep in. Do some

    • " Sleep in. Do something other than whine about it. Time as we know it is a human construction. "

      It seems to be going good for you in retirement.

      • Sweetie, if I was retired I'd be mega rich then. Much younger than that.

        But tell me, what is Noon? What is a minute? An hour? All of these are human constructions as are all measurements.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        You can sleep in no problem, if you normally get up earlier than you absolutely have to.

        The best thing, for your health, is to get up a bit earlier every day during the spring, and sleep in a bit every morning during the fall, so your rising time tracks the sunrise. But doing that would require that you get up most days before you absolutely have to.

        So instead we have time changes, which crunch all the adjustment into two days a year and impose them as "you absolutely have to."

        I'm not a morning person. Beca

  • So, 30% of Americans don't have electricity?
  • What I can't grasp (and the article fails to address) is why DST seems to be becoming more of a problem than it used to be. I am in my fifties and I certainly don't remember any significant campaigns to abolish daylight saving when I was younger (Note: I'm not saying that everyone was happy with it, just that it seemed to attract much less attention). Nothing about the concept of DST has changed since then and the hours of sunrise and sunset most certainly haven't.

    I find it particularly perplexing when
  • Fuck DST. I want to drive to work when it's light out. Tomorrow I won't be living in fear of hitting a deer. OK, there's still a healthy fear of that.

    • We don't care. Get a different job. You wasting my daylight so you can ride in your car is ludicrious. It has lights. You have insurance.

  • So, 70% of Americans want to get rid an archaic system that only serves to complicate and confuse things while making life a little more difficult and offering almost zero benefit.

    When are you guys switching to Metric?

    • We've already switched to metric for the things where it's beneficial. Our cars are metric, except for the spark plugs (which are SAE all over the world.) Engineering of electronics is done in metric, even though screen sizes are given in inches for ease of comprehension. Many liquids are sold by the liter.

      But metric makes some things more difficult, like dividing length by three. And the metric temperature scale is dumb if you're not using the number for scientific purposes. It requires you to use a decima

    • even your "metric countries" keep traditional units for many things where it makes sense. I use both metric and English units for my IT job.... no problem.

      So tell me, do you put the switch for your UK bathroom scale on "stone" or pound or kg? LOLZ

  • And they choose the time that's actually the reason why you feel crap.. wintertime, so the time from october till march, is actually the better biological time... Not the spring forward time....
  • It's "businesses" that is the reason, we still have DST in the USA. Setting clocks forward/back isn't as much of a pain like it use to be, but, getting use to that extra hour of sleep in the fall, and lack of hour in the spring is a PITA! We are "designed" to wake with the sunlight, go to bed with the dark. This disruption of our sleep cycle is not good. In "the old days", or during WW2, it might have been nice to have, but now, it is NOT needed.
  • Either leave it as standard time or leave it at DST. Old Indian saying... Only white man think cut top off blanket, sew it on bottom, make blanket longer

  • Negative effects (Score:3)

    by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Sunday November 03, 2019 @01:41PM (#59375422) Homepage

    According to associate professor Patricia Lakin-Thomas [yorku.ca], who studies biological clocks, per this CBC article [www.cbc.ca], the negative effects of the biannual time change include an "increase in car accidents and heart attacks, workplace injuries, and strokes. There's even a surprising study showing that judges give harsher sentences after the times change."

  • Keep daylight saving forever! (Score:3)

    by antdude ( 79039 ) on Sunday November 03, 2019 @09:55PM (#59377042) Homepage Journal

    I love daylight saving. I just hate changing back and forth! Keep it forever please. :P

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