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

Correlation =! caustion

[quonset]

Car accidents, strokes, and heart attacks spike in the days after the March time change.

Let's see. What else happens when there are more hours of daylight and the weather gets better? More people are out driving longer hours (car accidents) and people are cleaning up their yards, preparing their gardens/flower beds, doing odds and ends around the house and suddenly exercising to work off their winter fat (strokes and heart attacks).

But nope, changing one hour is the cause of everything. Nothing else matters.

If one hour change caused this much havoc then driving/flying between time zones should have the same effect yet oddly, it doesn't.