March 31, 2005
IT'S WHATEVER TIME WE DECIDE IT IS:
The power behind daylight-saving: Some grumble, but time change has purpose (Mark Sauer, March 31, 2005, San Diego Tribune)
Benjamin Franklin liked to sleep late. But waking early one day in 1784, the 78-year-old American minister to France was astonished to find the sun already streaming into his Paris residence.He wrote a whimsical letter to the Journal de Paris suggesting the madness of sleeping when it is light and wasting the cost of candles when it is dark. He suggested a solution: daylight-saving time.
It was an idea well ahead of its time and one which has proved remarkably controversial over the years. [...]
The many advantages of DST makes you wonder why it has been so fiercely resisted.
Besides providing an extra hour of light in the evening for recreation, many studies have shown DST saves energy, reduces the number of auto accidents and even lowers crime rates, said Prerau, who holds a Ph.D. from MIT and has co-authored three reports to Congress on the effects of DST.
"The idea has been contentious all over the world, and for the same reasons," Prerau said. "City people love it, country people don't."
Farmers are tied to the sun and DST has them operating "an hour late compared with everybody else for things like going to the bank in town, meeting trains and trucks for deliveries, or even going to a movie after finishing work," he explained.
"Then there was the danger for schoolchildren standing on rural roads in the morning darkness waiting for the bus."
Daylight-saving time begins in the United States at 2 a.m., local time, on the first Sunday in April. We revert to Standard Time at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in October. [...]
One persistent complaint about DST comes from people who blame the confusion over the time change for being late to church on the first Sunday in April.
"But there is this marvelous observation from a priest in St. Petersburg, Fla.," Downing said. "Why is it, he wondered, that when we fall back to Standard Time in October nobody shows up to church an hour early?"
The Wife is just happy because she won't have to subtract an hour from the clock on my bedside table for a few months.
MORE:
Spring Forward Faster (DAVID PRERAU , 3/31/05, NY Times)
Studies in many countries have found that daylight saving time curbs energy consumption and reduces traffic fatalities. While I was a researcher at the Transportation Department in the 1970's, we did a study that found that under daylight time in spring and fall, electrical energy use fell by about 1 percent, the equivalent today of roughly three billion kilowatt-hours per month, while the reduction in traffic accidents saved 25 lives and averted 1,000 injuries each month. Crime also decreased.Posted by Orrin Judd at March 31, 2005 7:19 AMThese results derive directly from the shift of daylight from morning to evening. For example, many people sleep through morning sunlight and then depend on electric lighting after the sun sets. Even taking commuters into account, far more people travel in the evening than in the morning, and this, when combined with poor visibility, leads to more traffic accidents. And more crimes in which darkness is a factor, like muggings, take place after dusk than before dawn.
Under the present law we have daylight time in October but not in March, even though the sun rises at similar times in both months. The European Union starts daylight time on the last Sunday in March, with few complaints. Adding one spring week of daylight time would synchronize us with Europe. Adding two weeks in the spring would double the benefit while not making a single sunrise later than those we already experience in October, thus reducing concerns about dark mornings for farmers and children heading for school.
We should also consider adding a week of daylight time in the fall. Daylight time now always ends just before Halloween - sometimes, as last year, on Halloween morning. Alarmingly, children's pedestrian deaths are four times higher on Halloween than on any other night of the year, and daylight time would provide another hour of light for young trick-or-treaters.
Mr. Judd;
You have young children - why would need an alarm clock?
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at March 31, 2005 9:50 AMRE: Besides providing an extra hour of light in the evening for recreation
When I hung around Capitol Hill for a bit, the sportings goods lobby was trying to get DST extended a few weeks. They figured that extra hour of daylight at the end of the day would boost sales.
Posted by: The Other Brother at March 31, 2005 10:35 AMI live in the country and think DST should be standard time year round. And as Ben reasoned ... would save a ton of energy too.
Posted by: Genecis at March 31, 2005 11:22 AM"Adding one spring week of daylight time would synchronize us with Europe."
Never has there been a better reason for discarding the whole concept. Having grown up for the most part in Indiana I never really had to deal with the abomination which is DST until moving to Missouri over 20 years ago. I for one am looking forward to the last Sunday in October.
Posted by: MB at March 31, 2005 12:18 PMThat's because you didn't live in a part of Indiana near the Central/Eastern boundary and a state boundary.
In high school I lived about three miles east of that official line. Even more extreme, a friend of mine lived on the south side of a county road whose westbound lane was actually in Michigan. For half a year, all of Indiana was on the same time, with Michigan an hour earlier, the other half the year it was Michigan and east Indiana a hour ahead of the rest of Indiana. Families kept the time that mattered most in their lives, often depending on where the parents worked. You had to specify "LaPorte Time" or "Michigan Time" or "South Bend Time" for things like school baskeball games or doctor's appointments or you'd find yourself arriving early or late.
Later, when I worked for the local paper, in what would be now called the "IT Dept.", we had to rearrange the delivery schedules based on that semi-annual timezone change to make sure our afternoon papers got delivered in a timely manner.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at March 31, 2005 2:12 PMRaoul:
In fact I did live near the state line with Illinois. However since the local population center was on the Indiana side (Terre Haute to be precise) we weren't inclined to adapt ourselves for their convenience. During the semi-annual rite we took a somewhat sadistic pleasure in tormenting those who lived in Illinois but who worked or went to school in Indiana.
Posted by: MB at March 31, 2005 5:44 PMThe time zones are a little skewered as far as boundaries go. Where I am in Texas, I can travel over 1,200 miles east and still be on Central Time, but with Arizona not switching to Daylight Savings, it only takes a 300-mile drive to change time by two hours between this Sunday and the end of October.
Posted by: John at March 31, 2005 6:48 PMYou're from downstate, huh? Well, okay, I guess that explains a lot.
Actually, from a geographic standpoint, I think that situation was unique. The other time-zone "triple point" to the south was in the middle of the Ohio River, and the two for Arizona are in the middle of nowhere and on the Mexican border.
And the lines on the map aren't always followed. The sign for Mountain/Pacific was south of Jackpot, Nev., mostly likely, I would assume, because they got a lot of visitors from Idaho who didn't want to change their watches. And I believe Wendover was the same with Utah. (And doesn't the Navaho reservation in Arizona stay on Mountain despite what the maps say?)
It's also interesting how the lines for "Railroad Time" match the current lines for Pacific/Mountain and Mountain/Central pretty closely. But originally Michigan, Ohio, Georgia and all of Kentucky, Florida and Tennessee were in Central. I haven't seen why that boundary moved west-- that the railroads were centered around Chicago biased the initial lines, to effect a sort of DST you get by being well west of a zone's standard meridian, or a later desire to be in sync with the economic centers of the Northeast back when they mattered. But now the more closely conform to the norm for zones worldwide, which is to be west of "sun time" so as to make the sun rise and set later, just like with DST.
Orrin:
You scared me there. When I first saw the title of this post, I thought it was a new corollory to the Bush doctrine and an assertion of America's global policing role.
Posted by: Peter B at April 1, 2005 7:22 AMMy only beef with DST is that we move the "spring forward" to 4PM on Monday.
What good does it do us to lose an hour of sleep on Saturday nights?
Posted by: BB at April 1, 2005 3:10 PM