This debate around this is always so confusing to me. And I'm apparently on the weird end that prefers more daylight in the morning than in the evening, but genuinely I'd much rather the clocks...
This debate around this is always so confusing to me. And I'm apparently on the weird end that prefers more daylight in the morning than in the evening, but genuinely I'd much rather the clocks not move at all. So if the daylight crowd is the majority then fantastic, pick it and I'm plenty happy to resign myself to a lifetime of darker mornings.
The factual picture was a bit more complicated. The National Safety Council reported in February that pre-sunrise fatalities had risen to 20 from 18 the year before.
2 additional fatalities is statistically noise. There is absolutely nothing complicated about this. If there's a noticable rise in total fatalities over 10 years (and not just presunrise fatalities), then there's maybe a case to make. Additionally, it's basically dark going to work and dark coming home in the winter for a bunch of the northern US, so who were the people complaining? I assume people on the middle margin maybe and there's more large population centers toward the middle and southern latitudes, but still, dark mornings and dark evenings is still pretty normal for a lot of people.
All that say that I'm pretty sure if you just stick the time on one end or the other and leave it for a couple years, people will adjust and genuinely prefer the clock staying where it is. I think people get spooked by change and are too quick to try changing back without giving the change enough time (which I say as a person who's not particularly excited about change in their personal life in general).
Guess we could ask folks in AZ how their doing. I assume they enjoying living on one time otherwise they'd also have switched back, right?
I'm finding the 1974 experiment kinda insane, and it's driving me nuts that nobody's mentioning the fact that they changed over in January. Has it been considered that maybe the experiment failed...
I'm finding the 1974 experiment kinda insane, and it's driving me nuts that nobody's mentioning the fact that they changed over in January.
Has it been considered that maybe the experiment failed because they tried to fix the problem of clock changes by introducing a new clock change at an unexpected time and date that no systems (such as schools) were prepared for?
Actually, no, worse than that. Going by the Wikipedia page for the 1973 oil crisis that spurred this, pushback from the initial weird-date-switch resulted in two more another one,1 with Standard Time resuming in October and then "permanent" DST happening again the following year in February. Those two years weren't even consistent with each other.
I really can't be surprised that approval for the experiment plummeted when it was implemented with less than a year's notice, seemingly no prior preparation in any sectors that probably desperately needed it, and which not only didn't remove DST switching, but instead moved it to completely unfamiliar dates for no good reason. This is a clown show.
By the way, off-topic, but you messed up your quote a bit! Need at least two line breaks to end a quote block.
1. An edit: Apparently, according to this Wikipedia article on U.S. time, prior to 2005, DST → ST changeovers in the U.S. happened on the last Sunday of October. This makes those switches in 1974 & 1975 normal, if still a bit confusing given the first one wasn't originally supposed to happen at all. As far as I'm aware, the January and February ST → DST dates were still arbitrary.
I am part of the select group who was around for this, however too young to know anything about it. Back then, the 'emergency' was the reason behind it. Was it right? As it turned out, no but they...
I am part of the select group who was around for this, however too young to know anything about it. Back then, the 'emergency' was the reason behind it. Was it right? As it turned out, no but they tried. Whatever the right time may be, it's going to be a PITA to do. Change is hard no matter when it's done and will always have it's detractors. Personally in the winter I get up early enough to be out the house to work/school etc., in the dark and return home in the dark so to me it's not a big deal. Others, in my own family will be a big deal.
I'd argue it'd actually be surprisingly easy to do for the layman if it were done right. What happened in 1974 was anything but that. The key is to ensure that things continue as usual as much as...
I'd argue it'd actually be surprisingly easy to do for the layman if it were done right. What happened in 1974 was anything but that.
The key is to ensure that things continue as usual as much as possible, specifically so as to avoid change and thus reduce friction. But the ramshackle approach that was actually taken included multiple arbitrary changeover dates with no precedent, and likely very little warning to boot. That's a great way to turn what should be a simple change into a huge headache.
An administration making impulsive decisions and just shooting from the hip to try to create the impression of "working for the people" without actually thinking anything through? Unheard of in...
An administration making impulsive decisions and just shooting from the hip to try to create the impression of "working for the people" without actually thinking anything through? Unheard of in our current times. T.T
Thanks, I fixed my quote. Forgot a final format check.
Growing up in Maine, changing the clocks back to standard time meant the sun rising around 8AM and setting around 4 PM, with around eight to eight and a half hours of daylight. You could...
I'm apparently on the weird end that prefers more daylight in the morning than in the evening
Growing up in Maine, changing the clocks back to standard time meant the sun rising around 8AM and setting around 4 PM, with around eight to eight and a half hours of daylight. You could hypothetically wake up and be driving to work before its light and have the sun already set before you leave, never seeing any sunlight.
Never in my life have I enjoyed being up even that early, and approximately nobody under retirement age wants early darkness in their only free time after work or school.
The best solution is permanent UTC for everyone and forget about the clock having anything to due with the sun.
This is something that sounds good but just ends up with everyone reinventing timezones again. 8 o clock isn’t just 8 o clock. It has meaning. It’s the morning, every country in the world. That’s...
The best solution is permanent UTC for everyone and forget about the clock having anything to due with the sun.
This is something that sounds good but just ends up with everyone reinventing timezones again.
8 o clock isn’t just 8 o clock. It has meaning. It’s the morning, every country in the world. That’s really why you say it. When you say, oh man I had to wake up at 6am yesterday, everyone in the world knows what that means.
16 UTC doesn’t mean anything. It could be any part of someone’s day. It only means something when you contextualize it with a location. Y’know, like a zone of time where the sun is roughly in the same place.
That’s why even in countries that tried to enforce a single timezone like China, in practice people had their clocks set to a de facto time zone that didn’t exists. Because no one wants to wake up at 2am Beijing Standard Time.
I mean that's also been my lifetime lived experience as well. Just personally I'd much rather have more sunshine when I'm trying to come to terms with being awake in the morning than more sunshine...
I mean that's also been my lifetime lived experience as well. Just personally I'd much rather have more sunshine when I'm trying to come to terms with being awake in the morning than more sunshine in the evening. When the sunsets late time wise I completely lose track of how late in the day it is making it hard to wind down to sleep. Just a personal circadian rhythm thing I think.
I think switching to permanent UTC is an even more hot take though. Wild. I think time zones make sense especially in a pretty mobile and global society. It unifies part of our experience with a general sense of what times correspond to relative amounts of daylight.
Posted before but, knowing someone from this project: Save Standard Time has led me to have considered the evidence and fully be on team standard time.
Posted before but, knowing someone from this project: Save Standard Time has led me to have considered the evidence and fully be on team standard time.
I looked at several of the sources for that site's health claims. Nearly all of them are about the effects of actively switching between DST and ST (specifically that the lost hour of sleep during...
I looked at several of the sources for that site's health claims. Nearly all of them are about the effects of actively switching between DST and ST (specifically that the lost hour of sleep during the switch to DST is worse) - which feels pretty disingenuous when they're arguing for a permanent switch where these problems would only happen once.
The sources definitely make a good argument for picking a permanent time, but I don't see a compelling argument for permanent standard time over permanent DST other than personal preference.
I'd have to go back and look as it's been a while. But the major sleep organizations and AMA have also come out in favor of Permanent ST. I suspect that there could be different experiences...
I'd have to go back and look as it's been a while. But the major sleep organizations and AMA have also come out in favor of Permanent ST. I suspect that there could be different experiences depending on if one is at the East or West side of a larger time zone and population density might impact whether ST or DT makes more sense
Iirc one argument is how late sunrise would be for several months and that the commute at the beginning of the day is riskier due to that tiredness than the end of the day. But the argue, and again successfully enough that dozens of sleep organizations are behind them, that human sleep rhythms (especially combined with our enforced work schedules) are more aligned with ST in aggregate.
I talked it through with the person I know who posted it so I'd have to literally recreate my thought processes from several years ago, but I did feel it was overall compelling. They have a lot of material (including stuff I don't care about like "religious freedom") to speak to a lot of different groups so it's a bit overwhelming.
FYI, this is new legislation. Legislatively, this isn't that the same bill the Senate voted for a few years back, that died in the House. So this bill is going to the Senate next. Some other past...
The House passed a bill Tuesday that would make daylight saving time permanent. Proponents, including the White House, argued the change would provide more daylight during the times that Americans are most active. The vote was 308-117
FYI, this is new legislation. Legislatively, this isn't that the same bill the Senate voted for a few years back, that died in the House. So this bill is going to the Senate next.
Some other past discussions on Tildes on the topic:
I wonder if this one is happening due to Middle Eastern oil supply issues just like the 70s attempt did? It'd be weird that it happened twice, but at least I could get my second nickel! Anyway,...
I wonder if this one is happening due to Middle Eastern oil supply issues just like the 70s attempt did? It'd be weird that it happened twice, but at least I could get my second nickel!
Anyway, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the bill as written be capable of sticking us in different times depending on when it's signed into law? If I'm reading it right, it does two things: Repeals the part of the Uniform Time Act that dictates that switchovers happen, and brings all US timezones one hour forward. Judging by that, it could theoretically leave us with DST+1 if it goes into effect before November, no?
What I'm seeing is that it would repeal the law for the switch overs, and then it change the actual timezones to match DST by subtracting an hour from the difference to UTC. So regardless of when...
What I'm seeing is that it would repeal the law for the switch overs, and then it change the actual timezones to match DST by subtracting an hour from the difference to UTC. So regardless of when it goes into effect, EST would go from UTC-5 to UTC-4.
I mentioned that yeah. I gave it further thought however and I think I messed up in how it described the switchovers: Rather than saying that the timezones actually change twice, it describes it...
I mentioned that yeah. I gave it further thought however and I think I messed up in how it described the switchovers: Rather than saying that the timezones actually change twice, it describes it as "be[ing] advanced one hour," which makes it interpretable as something of a continuing effect. So repealing it without changing the timezones would set all clocks to Standard Time, and then the timezone changes set them all back to DST.
Though now that you've made me reread it, it was perhaps a bit silly of me to think a law would still affect the definition of a timezone after said law got repealed.
Ugh, these people keep missing the point. Permanent daylight savings is useful on the west coast because it brings us closer to east coast time. As things stand right now, it’s hard to collaborate...
Ugh, these people keep missing the point. Permanent daylight savings is useful on the west coast because it brings us closer to east coast time. As things stand right now, it’s hard to collaborate between coasts because of the short time overlap. Making it permanent in a place like Florida accomplishes nothing but annoying folks because it makes no sense. Why can’t they do it to the list of options and let the states decide? Washington voted in permanent daylight savings a decade ago, but Congress wouldn’t allow it.
I already said something like this to a family member who lived through the first switch. "As a coder, i'd like them to just pick one and stick with it. As a long time coder, I expect them to...
I already said something like this to a family member who lived through the first switch.
"As a coder, i'd like them to just pick one and stick with it. As a long time coder, I expect them to oscillate wildly between both options and then pick an undisclosed third out of no where."
It’s an intellectual argument, you would never get all the countries to do it. Anyway, I see the abolishment of 9-5 office hours as a net win for traffic.
It’s an intellectual argument, you would never get all the countries to do it. Anyway, I see the abolishment of 9-5 office hours as a net win for traffic.
The bill explicitly allows states to ignore it if they so choose:
Why can’t they do it to the list of options and let the states decide?
The bill explicitly allows states to ignore it if they so choose:
The standard time for a State that has exempted itself from the provisions of section 3(a) of the Uniform Time Act of 1966 (15 U.S.C. 260a(a)), as in effect on the day before the date of the enactment of the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025, pursuant to such section, or an area of a State that has exempted such area from such provisions pursuant to such section, shall be, as such State considers appropriate—
The standard time for such State or area, as the case may be, pursuant to subsection (a) of this section; or
The standard time for such State or area, as the case may be, pursuant to subsection (a) of this section as it was in effect on the day before the date of the enactment of the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025.
If 1974 was bad, just wait for this thing to pass. Every state having it's own thing, ohh boy! That will be an interesting experiment. Then again I am one of those who enjoys watching chaos.
If 1974 was bad, just wait for this thing to pass. Every state having it's own thing, ohh boy! That will be an interesting experiment. Then again I am one of those who enjoys watching chaos.
If you think things were good before 1974, I've got bad news from the Uniform Time Act of 1966! If you think states all have the same rules now, you'll never believe it, but I've got more bad news!
(a) Duration of period; State exemption
[...] (1) any State that lies entirely within one time zone may by law exempt itself from the provisions of this subsection providing for the advancement of time, but only if that law provides that the entire State (including all political subdivisions thereof) shall observe the standard time otherwise applicable during that period, and (2) any State with parts thereof in more than one time zone may by law exempt either the entire State as provided in (1) or may exempt the entire area of the State lying within any time zone.
Just to make sure I'm understanding this because it's early in the morning yet. Title says permanent daylight time, but it's actually permanent standard time, so like your other comment mentions,...
Just to make sure I'm understanding this because it's early in the morning yet. Title says permanent daylight time, but it's actually permanent standard time, so like your other comment mentions, we are in fact saving standard time?
This debate around this is always so confusing to me. And I'm apparently on the weird end that prefers more daylight in the morning than in the evening, but genuinely I'd much rather the clocks not move at all. So if the daylight crowd is the majority then fantastic, pick it and I'm plenty happy to resign myself to a lifetime of darker mornings.
However I remain baffled at the stastics that get referenced suggesting that permanent daylight time was somehow more dangerous. For example from The US tried permanent daylight saving time in the ’70s. People hated it.:
2 additional fatalities is statistically noise. There is absolutely nothing complicated about this. If there's a noticable rise in total fatalities over 10 years (and not just presunrise fatalities), then there's maybe a case to make. Additionally, it's basically dark going to work and dark coming home in the winter for a bunch of the northern US, so who were the people complaining? I assume people on the middle margin maybe and there's more large population centers toward the middle and southern latitudes, but still, dark mornings and dark evenings is still pretty normal for a lot of people.
All that say that I'm pretty sure if you just stick the time on one end or the other and leave it for a couple years, people will adjust and genuinely prefer the clock staying where it is. I think people get spooked by change and are too quick to try changing back without giving the change enough time (which I say as a person who's not particularly excited about change in their personal life in general).
Guess we could ask folks in AZ how their doing. I assume they enjoying living on one time otherwise they'd also have switched back, right?
I'm finding the 1974 experiment kinda insane, and it's driving me nuts that nobody's mentioning the fact that they changed over in January.
Has it been considered that maybe the experiment failed because they tried to fix the problem of clock changes by introducing a new clock change at an unexpected time and date that no systems (such as schools) were prepared for?
Actually, no, worse than that. Going by the Wikipedia page for the 1973 oil crisis that spurred this, pushback from the initial weird-date-switch resulted in
two moreanother one,1 with Standard Time resuming in October and then "permanent" DST happening again the following year in February. Those two years weren't even consistent with each other.I really can't be surprised that approval for the experiment plummeted when it was implemented with less than a year's notice, seemingly no prior preparation in any sectors that probably desperately needed it, and which not only didn't remove DST switching, but instead moved it to completely unfamiliar dates for no good reason. This is a clown show.
By the way, off-topic, but you messed up your quote a bit! Need at least two line breaks to end a quote block.
1. An edit: Apparently, according to this Wikipedia article on U.S. time, prior to 2005, DST → ST changeovers in the U.S. happened on the last Sunday of October. This makes those switches in 1974 & 1975 normal, if still a bit confusing given the first one wasn't originally supposed to happen at all. As far as I'm aware, the January and February ST → DST dates were still arbitrary.
I am part of the select group who was around for this, however too young to know anything about it. Back then, the 'emergency' was the reason behind it. Was it right? As it turned out, no but they tried. Whatever the right time may be, it's going to be a PITA to do. Change is hard no matter when it's done and will always have it's detractors. Personally in the winter I get up early enough to be out the house to work/school etc., in the dark and return home in the dark so to me it's not a big deal. Others, in my own family will be a big deal.
I'd argue it'd actually be surprisingly easy to do for the layman if it were done right. What happened in 1974 was anything but that.
The key is to ensure that things continue as usual as much as possible, specifically so as to avoid change and thus reduce friction. But the ramshackle approach that was actually taken included multiple arbitrary changeover dates with no precedent, and likely very little warning to boot. That's a great way to turn what should be a simple change into a huge headache.
An administration making impulsive decisions and just shooting from the hip to try to create the impression of "working for the people" without actually thinking anything through? Unheard of in our current times. T.T
Thanks, I fixed my quote. Forgot a final format check.
Growing up in Maine, changing the clocks back to standard time meant the sun rising around 8AM and setting around 4 PM, with around eight to eight and a half hours of daylight. You could hypothetically wake up and be driving to work before its light and have the sun already set before you leave, never seeing any sunlight.
Never in my life have I enjoyed being up even that early, and approximately nobody under retirement age wants early darkness in their only free time after work or school.
The best solution is permanent UTC for everyone and forget about the clock having anything to due with the sun.
This is something that sounds good but just ends up with everyone reinventing timezones again.
8 o clock isn’t just 8 o clock. It has meaning. It’s the morning, every country in the world. That’s really why you say it. When you say, oh man I had to wake up at 6am yesterday, everyone in the world knows what that means.
16 UTC doesn’t mean anything. It could be any part of someone’s day. It only means something when you contextualize it with a location. Y’know, like a zone of time where the sun is roughly in the same place.
That’s why even in countries that tried to enforce a single timezone like China, in practice people had their clocks set to a de facto time zone that didn’t exists. Because no one wants to wake up at 2am Beijing Standard Time.
So You Want To Abolish Time Zones is a classic blog article that I keep saved just for stuff like this and why it's not really a good idea.
I mean that's also been my lifetime lived experience as well. Just personally I'd much rather have more sunshine when I'm trying to come to terms with being awake in the morning than more sunshine in the evening. When the sunsets late time wise I completely lose track of how late in the day it is making it hard to wind down to sleep. Just a personal circadian rhythm thing I think.
I think switching to permanent UTC is an even more hot take though. Wild. I think time zones make sense especially in a pretty mobile and global society. It unifies part of our experience with a general sense of what times correspond to relative amounts of daylight.
Posted before but, knowing someone from this project: Save Standard Time has led me to have considered the evidence and fully be on team standard time.
I looked at several of the sources for that site's health claims. Nearly all of them are about the effects of actively switching between DST and ST (specifically that the lost hour of sleep during the switch to DST is worse) - which feels pretty disingenuous when they're arguing for a permanent switch where these problems would only happen once.
The sources definitely make a good argument for picking a permanent time, but I don't see a compelling argument for permanent standard time over permanent DST other than personal preference.
I'd have to go back and look as it's been a while. But the major sleep organizations and AMA have also come out in favor of Permanent ST. I suspect that there could be different experiences depending on if one is at the East or West side of a larger time zone and population density might impact whether ST or DT makes more sense
Iirc one argument is how late sunrise would be for several months and that the commute at the beginning of the day is riskier due to that tiredness than the end of the day. But the argue, and again successfully enough that dozens of sleep organizations are behind them, that human sleep rhythms (especially combined with our enforced work schedules) are more aligned with ST in aggregate.
I talked it through with the person I know who posted it so I'd have to literally recreate my thought processes from several years ago, but I did feel it was overall compelling. They have a lot of material (including stuff I don't care about like "religious freedom") to speak to a lot of different groups so it's a bit overwhelming.
FYI, this is new legislation. Legislatively, this isn't that the same bill the Senate voted for a few years back, that died in the House. So this bill is going to the Senate next.
Some other past discussions on Tildes on the topic:
I wonder if this one is happening due to Middle Eastern oil supply issues just like the 70s attempt did? It'd be weird that it happened twice, but at least I could get my second nickel!
Anyway, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the bill as written be capable of sticking us in different times depending on when it's signed into law? If I'm reading it right, it does two things: Repeals the part of the Uniform Time Act that dictates that switchovers happen, and brings all US timezones one hour forward. Judging by that, it could theoretically leave us with DST+1 if it goes into effect before November, no?
What I'm seeing is that it would repeal the law for the switch overs, and then it change the actual timezones to match DST by subtracting an hour from the difference to UTC. So regardless of when it goes into effect, EST would go from UTC-5 to UTC-4.
I mentioned that yeah. I gave it further thought however and I think I messed up in how it described the switchovers: Rather than saying that the timezones actually change twice, it describes it as "be[ing] advanced one hour," which makes it interpretable as something of a continuing effect. So repealing it without changing the timezones would set all clocks to Standard Time, and then the timezone changes set them all back to DST.
Though now that you've made me reread it, it was perhaps a bit silly of me to think a law would still affect the definition of a timezone after said law got repealed.
I want the sun up before me and down before me, to better fit evolutionary sleep signals. That means Standard Time.
Ugh, these people keep missing the point. Permanent daylight savings is useful on the west coast because it brings us closer to east coast time. As things stand right now, it’s hard to collaborate between coasts because of the short time overlap. Making it permanent in a place like Florida accomplishes nothing but annoying folks because it makes no sense. Why can’t they do it to the list of options and let the states decide? Washington voted in permanent daylight savings a decade ago, but Congress wouldn’t allow it.
Hi there, I have to do a lot of work with time conversions, this would be my personal hell. Please don't.
I already said something like this to a family member who lived through the first switch.
"As a coder, i'd like them to just pick one and stick with it. As a long time coder, I expect them to oscillate wildly between both options and then pick an undisclosed third out of no where."
Just swap it by 30 minutes go halfsies
https://www.timeanddate.com/time/change/australia/lord-howe-island
I mean, the ideal answer would be for everyone in the world to go on GMT. That's just not going to happen, though.
I've mentioned it in another comment here, but So You Want To Abolish Time Zones basically lays out why that's not really a good idea.
It’s an intellectual argument, you would never get all the countries to do it. Anyway, I see the abolishment of 9-5 office hours as a net win for traffic.
Meh lets just make it Unix time
The bill explicitly allows states to ignore it if they so choose:
If 1974 was bad, just wait for this thing to pass. Every state having it's own thing, ohh boy! That will be an interesting experiment. Then again I am one of those who enjoys watching chaos.
That's pretty much what we have now, this is adding a third option to the existing 2.
If you think things were good before 1974, I've got bad news from the Uniform Time Act of 1966!
If you think states all have the same rules now, you'll never believe it, but I've got more bad news!
Oh, wow, thank you. I should not have tried to skim that bill after going through all my election material, I completely missed it.
To be clear, they're doing permanent standard time not permanent daylight.Nope. I'm incorrect
Just to make sure I'm understanding this because it's early in the morning yet. Title says permanent daylight time, but it's actually permanent standard time, so like your other comment mentions, we are in fact saving standard time?
No, I'm wrong. I swear I read this yesterday and it was the opposite. Mea culpa, thanks for the catch