FPQ: Daylight Saving Time

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Image by valentinsimon0 from Pixabay

I don’t as a rule do Fandango’s Provocative Question because I find it a little too provocative at times, but playing with time is one of my favorite subjects, so I figured to th’ow my two cents in here…

Assuming you agree that we should have the same time year-round rather than moving up an hour each spring and back an hour each fall, do you favor going to permanent Daylight Saving Time or permanent Standard Time? Why do you feel that way?

I am no fan of Daylight Saving Time, but I can understand the rationale behind it: you don’t want the sun rising too early or too late. Until not too long ago, DST began on the last Sunday in April and ended the last Sunday in October. Here’s what that would have looked like this year in Atlanta:

  • April 23 (day before DST): Sunrise 5:57 AM, Sunset 7:14 PM

  • April 24 (DST): Sunrise 6:56 AM, Sunset 8:15 PM

  • October 29 (last day of DST): Sunrise 7:54 AM, Sunset 6:47 PM

  • October 30 (EST): Sunrise 6:55 AM, Sunset 5:46 PM

Were we not to set the clocks ahead on April 24, the sun would come up earlier and earlier until, by June 22, it would rise before 5 AM. At the other end of the year, if we didn’t set the clocks back on October 30, the sun wouldn’t rise until 9 AM on December 21. (I used this page to get the rise and set times, subtracting 1 hour from the April numbers because Atlanta would still be on standard time on April 23 in our example).

So there is a rationale for moving the clocks, and you can see the consequences of staying on DST all year and staying on standard time all year. As I see it, DST only became a big issue when they decided to start it in March and end it in November. So, here are my suggestions:

  • Go back to the days of "last Sunday in April to last Sunday in October." That way, you have roughly 6 months of daylight time and 6 months of standard time, and it makes sense.
  • If that’s not acceptable, split the difference: on November 6: set the clocks back 30 minutes and leave them there.

Regardless of what we do, some people aren’t going to happy…

One final thought:

Published by John Holton

Internet disc jockey, lover of old TV (especially the commercials), inveterate wise guy.

Published

22 thoughts on “FPQ: Daylight Saving Time”

  1. Pingback: The First Day Of Spring Week That Was – The Sound of One Hand Typing

  2. It screws me up when they change the “time” around. I don’t mind if it gets darker earlier. I like waking up when it is daylight out sooner and i am not a morning person but it just makes me feel happier.

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    1. Everyone has their own opinion and deals with it in a different way. I was in England years ago during July, and the sun came up at 5 AM and stayed up until almost 10 PM. I dealt with it…

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  3. Permanent Daylight Savings would mean schoolchildren would be standing in the cold darkness an hour earlier. This would be dangerous because of traffic and sexual predictors.

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  5. I hate the change and just want to pick one. Bothers me for two weeks. And people have a lot of heart attacks. But it would be hard in Dec. to get moving I guess. If it stayed on Daylight Saving Time. Still, since I’m not a morning person, I think I’d like it stay light longer. So I’ll go for that.

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  6. That is interesting. I’m not a morning person…I always think of what it does in the afternoons.

    This is the first year I can remember that I’ve had trouble with it. I can’t for the life of me get up and not snooze since it changed last Saturday. My body is still on the old time.

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  7. If I could do that here in Oz I would happily leave it permanently as the no-daylight-savings-time time.

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      1. Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia are no DST (although both WA (2010’s) and Qld (1980’s) have trialed it and then voted no for it).

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  9. I kinda like the “split the difference” approach. The only down side would the that we’d 30 minutes behind (or ahead) most of the rest of the “western world.”

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