Up here in the tundra, during the winter months we go to work in the dark, and come home in the dark. Not a big deal… until you type it out like I just did. Then you say “That is depressing. And crazy. WHY am living here?!?”
Is anyone aware of a study of desire for DST in rural vs urban folks? I’m not talking the farmers but rather those that have to commute via (poorly lit) back and county roads as opposed to constantly well lit streets. I had light for the first time in a long while on my morning commute and it was a lot less stressful
When I was stationed in Iceland I worked rotating shifts* and during the winter never saw the sun except on my days off. Likewise in summer although the sun did set, it was close enough to the horizon that on clear days it did not get dark enough to require headlights while driving.
*
- 8 hours on
- 16 hours off
- 8 hours on
- 8 hours off
- 8 hours on
- 16 hours off
- 8 hours on
- 8 hours off
- 8 hours on
- 16 hours off
- 8 hours on
- 80 hours off
Essentially, you work six shifts in five days, then get three days, plus 8 hours off. That way your string, as we called it starts a day later in the week than the previous one.
That engineer was me, and yes, that is a good enough reason. I have yet to see a valid argument for full-year DST vs full-year ST. Care to make one?
124 posts later, and I think we have an answer on why US Congress is split on this matter. 
Really thought I’d bring NP’s point back up as some posters are getting frayed in their responses. I think it’s fair to say that the majority of posters (and Americans in general) dislike switching their clocks. But we have a variety of reasons which way we’d fix it, and reasons for why/why not. Even if we have a fix that satisfies a simple majority, it is likely to irritate a substantial minority of those who preferred a different fix or the status quo.
Our government has a hard enough time on deciding matters of import, so issues that have no substantial backing are unlikely to get them to spend the time money and credibility on making any change. Or as I said back in post # 6
Which, along with the back and forth in the thread is probably the actual answer to the OP. Ways to fix it, opinions on which is better, financial and environmental consequences, appeals to natural law or human biology aside, all of these fall by the wayside of why CONGRESS doesn’t fix the problem.
Yeah. The politicians know they will not be especially rewarded by voters for whom a sort-of-okay solution delivers a tolerable compromise result.
But they know they will be hammered hard, or at the very least roundly ridiculed, by any constituency segments who incur expense or annoyance.
Also one’s longitude is a larger factor than most people realize; for reasons that are obvious if you stop to think about it. If I’ve done the math right, the sun will rise four minutes later, by the clock, for each degree of longitude further west, regardless of the time of year.
For example, Escondido, CA and Eugene OR are in the same time zone, and Eugene is about 11 degrees north of Escondido, but also 6.5 degrees to the west. On December 22 this year*, sunrise in Escondido will occur at 6:48 and in Eugene the sun will rise at 7:41, a difference of 53 minutes. Again assuming I’ve got the underlying principles right, this means ~27 of those 53 minutes result from the difference in longitude, not latitude; only the remaining difference of ~26 minutes results from the difference in latitude.
I think this may be one reason there’s so much disagreement on the issue of permanent DST. You might live in Canada or the northern U.S., but if you are near the eastern edge of your time zone, the late sunrises won’t be as much as a problem for you, and the earlier sunsets are more a a problem.
Thanks for that; it was a good read that brought back a lot of memories. I remember that experiment–actually, I might as well have been watching from the sidelines or the stands. We lived in Toronto, where we stayed on standard time that winter, and we could get American TV from Buffalo.
Of course, the US went to DST in January, 1974, and results were mixed (at best) to downright hated (at worst). Parents, especially, were vocal about their opposition once the experiment got going, and they realized that their children had to walk to school in the dark. That Washington Post item was correct when it said that kids were being equipped with fluorescent vests and flashlights, if what I saw on the Buffalo TV news was any indication.
But their were other complaints. Especially in the winter, and in Buffalo with its legendary snowfalls, commuters complained that dealing with snow was difficult enough; now they had to deal with darkness during their morning commutes. Others were just plain unhappy, and no amount of daylight at the end of the day could help.
Like I said, I was watching on the sidelines, but I remember that time. Great link; thanks for posting it.
It’s a political maxim that you’ll almost always be punished more by voters you piss off than you’ll be rewarded by those you please.
I was in Junior High when they tried this, in the name of “Saving Energy.”
Since we had to walk to school in the pre-dawn blackness, there were police out with flares at the major intersections, making sure we kids didn’t get squashed. Nobody counted on that expense, I would guess.
Except for the cost of flares is it really much of an expense? I mean, I assume those police were on duty anyway. Unless there were other pressing matters that didn’t get done as a result of this I don’t see why making them crossing guards for an hour is a big deal.
I don’t give a shit either way but I don’t see why one is any better or worse than the other. Anecdotally, most people at least think that they’d prefer permanent DST so that works for me if I had to choose. Your only reason seems to be to cover up your oversight. Are there others?
Yes.
Noon = 12:00
Anything else is just wrong, mostly by defintion.
It’s the police that are expensive.
Yeah. But, presumably, you already have them on the payroll and assign them this task.
If they had to hire police then sure although I suspect it would be cheaper for the school to hire a crossing guard for a couple hours each day. No need for them to be police.
Your statement that “Noon is 12:00” is a tautology. Noon is an indication on a clock, not a comment about the position of the Sun.
The daily zenith of the sun happens nowhere particularly close to 12:00 on the clock in most of the world. Whether they observe DST or not.
One might say it happens in practical terms pretty much nowhere in the world.
Are these street lights we’re talking about, or some other kind of outdoor lighting?
If so, it’s too bad they weren’t built with upward facing ambient light detectors so they would come on and go off, not according to a rigid schedule programmed into them, but simply based on whether it was dark or not. For lamps manufactured today, could this feature feasibly be included in every unit?
So you want to go back to pre-1883 in the US when each town had its own time based on when the sun reaches zenith?