This seems like such a simple thing to me, and yet the US just can’t seem to get it done. What are the issues preventing this?
This seems like such a simple thing to me, and yet the US just can’t seem to get it done. What are the issues preventing this?
We keep DST for more months than ST so I think more people like it more.
I kinda think it runs backwards, making the sun set even earlier in the clock day during winter. So much more dispiriting to come home in the dark than to go to work in the dark.
My argument for ending it is that you can’t make days longer or shorter by moving the clock around, but I think we should just keep adding weeks onto DST and taking them away from ST until eventually it’s just DST. But settling on either scheme would be ok, better than switching back and forth.
We already tried year-round DST in the 70s. It didn’t last through the first year because kids were getting hit by cars on the way to school in the early morning darkness.
https://washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-daylight-saving-time-in-the-70s-people-hated-it/
This has got to be bullshit. Or Americans are morons. There are so many places in the world where kids go to school in the dark anyways that I can’t even wrap my head around how this causes kids to be hit by cars.
Oh well, kids don’t walk to school in america anymore anyways so whatever.
For starters, those places have sidewalks, and street lamps, and generally care about pedestrians.
Some kids are straight walking on the side of a 4 lane highway to school right now.
But to be clear: the solution is not changing the time but adding pedestrian infrastructure. It would solve many more problems than kids getting hit.
/agree
Even with ST, my youngest goes to school in the dark all winter. Just now, as it’s light when he goes out, they’re about to swap it to DST and he’ll be in the dark again for a couple of weeks.
“Losing” that short window of morning sunlight is nothing to me. Gaining the ability to have normal sleep patterns and not changing the clocks is infinitely better.
I do not care what the time is, as long as it stays consistent. My sleep is fucked up for 2x2 weeks every fucking year for no good reason.
You must be new here
So we issue Little Johnny a retroreflective PT belt, and/or start the school day 30 minutes later on the west end of each time zone. Problem solved.
It’s not the 1970’s anymore. The fact that a bunch of idiot boomers hated change is no reason to keep this idiot system.
People didn’t like the fact that it was still nearly dark when they got their lunch break at work either.
Yeah but it’s dark in the morning anyway. Elementary school here starts at like 7am, that is a bigger problem than the DST. I thought they hated it because they switched it back in January? If it just never changed I’m sure it would not feel so shocking.
Already we do 8 months of DST and only 4 of EST here.
Why the fuck do schools start so early and let out so early? It’s like everything is engineered by some asshole trying to make everyone miserable.
Agreed. I am so glad my kids are grown, but I can still remember personally walking to school so early. It’s nonsense. Also here if they were sensible they’d run school through the summer (when it’s too hot to do much) and give the kids long winter and spring breaks instead (when there is more going on here). But nobody can accuse the last 20 years of Florida’s government of being sensible. Not since Lawton Chiles have we had an actual good governor. Locally it’s more hit & miss but state level it’s been a string of misses.
Except haven’t we delayed school start times significantly compared to the 70s now?