Proof Daylight Saving Time Is Dumb, Dangerous, and Costly (bloomberg.com)

From a report on Bloomberg: The case for daylight saving time has been shaky for a while. The biannual time change was originally implemented to save energy. Yet dozens of studies around the world have found that changing the clocks has either minuscule or non-existent effects on energy use. [...] The latest research suggests the time change can be harmful to our health and cost us money. The suffering of the spring time change begins with the loss of an hour of sleep. That might not seem like a big deal, but researchers have found it can be dangerous to mess with sleep schedules. Car accidents, strokes, and heart attacks spike in the days after the March time change. It turns out that judges, sleep deprived by daylight saving, impose harsher sentences. [...] Some of the last defenders of daylight saving time have been a cluster of business groups who assume the change helps stimulate consumer spending. That's not true either, according to recent analysis of 380 million bank and credit-card transactions by the JPMorgan Chase Institute.

Comments

National DST Day

[PopeRatzo]

Why not just make the Monday after DST time change a national holiday? Problem solved.

Me, I like Daylight Savings Time, because it will allow me to sit out on the porch in May listening to the Blackhawks game and still have enough light to read. And in the Winter it would suck having to go to work in the morning in the pitch dark.

Re:Proof was not given...

[religionofpeas]

A correlation was cited, but causation was not proven.

DST happens on different dates every year, so if there's a clear correlation, it's as good as a proof for causation, because there's nothing else that happens on those days.

Re:We've known this for years

[squiggleslash]

Yeah, change normal office working hours from 7-8am to 4pm-4.30pm. Everyone goes to bed at 6pm-7pm (kids), 9pm-10pm everyone else. The TV watershed is reduced to 10p... no, 7pm, because it shouldn't be that late in the first place.

Quite why we can't do that, and have to change the clock instead, is a mystery to me! We could even continue to do it during sunnier parts of the year if there really does turn out, despite TFA, to be some reason for "daylight savings".