Daylight Saving Time - Worst Day Ever

China has the right idea. If elected Supreme Ruler I will implement one time zone to rule them all. Man’s gotta have goals.

Yeah, for all the years I’ve been alive and dealing with Daylight Savings, I haven’t heard that sort-of statistic before. But even the local meteorologist was talking about it last night. I wonder if this is real, or some kind of new conventional wisdom like “emergency rooms see more patients during a full moon” or “people that pick up a penny on the ground statistically have better luck unless they also step on a sidewalk crack.”

I’ve heard about it for decades. It’s pretty plausible. Screw up everyone’s sleep schedule by an hour and it’s going to cause an uptick across a large population. A lot of people can’t get that hour back, especially if they’re working long hours on those days.

Just some information. Very different from a full moon.

I appreciate the links. Some of the reports were from health panic-aggregator sites like WebMD, so I discounted those. But summaries like this one, which was by The U.S. Government and reviewed driving habits from around 1980 through 2001, were very helpful. I think that’s pretty convincing, and that people should take it easy on the roads today.

The Sunday after DST is pretty bad, but the Monday is really the worst. chugs energy drinks

Hey everybody, who’s tired this morning?!

Everybody’s tired.

I will say that getting out of work in the sunlight (or for today, a lightened gloom) is nice the Monday after… but lunch really sucks. You’re not exactly hungry when you’re supposed to eat, and in my case I have a bunch of meetings during the time when my body will be craving food.

Regarding the “why not do DST all the time” idea (which I realize would require a change in federal law) I guess back in the Nixon Administration, as an emergency measure to save daylight/energy, there was a change to let DST continue (I’m guessing it must have been the fall of '73, because of the OPEC oil embargo). Then a couple of kids waiting for school buses in the dark mornings got run over and that put the kibosh on THAT. God forbid they just adjust the schedule to start school a bit later during the worst of the winter.

Yeah, but if you are making school later, you are interfering with parents’ ability to get their kids out the door and themselves off to work.

The number of studies that show teenagers and sleep deprivation is staggering.

Basically teen hormones cause their sleep cycle to lag behind adults and children, and high schools with later start times have higher performing students. DST of course fucks with that as well.

The local junior high and high schools instituted a 9am start time a couple of years ago just for that reason.

I mean, let’s be honest, the only reason early starts work for adults is because something between half and 85% (depending on the study) of American adults is carrying a caffeine addiction. There’s enough about our schedules that is pretty messed up that I can totally believe in one hour causing a disproportionate amount of damage until people adjust.

I prefer Spring Ahead over Fall Back on a professional level. Personal, reverse that. Which makes both unfortunate.

Fun bit of history about DST from a BackStory (The American History Guys) podcast. Highly recommended.

Anyone else slowly coming to terms with the morning coming an hour too early?

Ssssshhhh! Trying to sleep here.

Edit: Rubio presented two bills today. One for Florida to stay at DST and one for the entire country.

We said up-thread it was illegal for a state to stay DST. Doesn’t Rubio read these threads? I mean wtf.

It’s not illegal if congress says it’s not. Thus the bills. Unless I missed a joke. Then WHOOOSH! :)

Getting there. I’m in the Depression stage. Acceptance will come eventually, I hope.