I listened to an NPR news story this morning saying to expect an increase in car accidents as a result of the time change this weekend (11.5.23). I wouldn’t have guessed that would occur on the fall time change, b/c drivers will get another hour of sleep. Wondering if there might be other reasons, perhaps b/c it is darker earlier, harder to see other cars or deer in the road during peak commute times? In any event, common sense says to be extra cautious when driving for the next few days.
Messing with folks’ sleep patterns causes problems either way, just like how jet lag applies to travel in either direction.
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Need to remember that extra hour sleep also means your mind/body says it’s staying up an extra hour at the end of your day.
Your mind/body says it’s bedtime and you look at the clock, you have another hour before bedtime.
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I always hated having to get up at 2am to change all the clocks… gezzz… 
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I suspect it’s because most people are driving home with it being suddenly one hour darker on Monday. Rather than adjusting to it a couple of minutes per day. Perhaps there are fewer accidents than typical in the morning commute.
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Actually, as I vacuumed today, I got a head start on changing the 22 clocks. I’ll see if anyone notices. Thank heavens for the atomic clocks that change themselves.
My state voted to remove it 5 years ago. We, and 18 other states are waiting for Congress to act on it. Might happen before I die… but I’m not counting on it.
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Folks probably forget we tried ‘year-round’ DST back in '74. Folks didn’t like it, went back to regular DST in '75:
“Permanent daylight saving time was enacted for the winter of 1974, but there were complaints of children going to school in the dark and working people commuting and starting their work day in pitch darkness during the winter months, and it was repealed a year later.”
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Its even worse than I thought. Turns out Covid seems to be causing brain dysfunction, whether you actually contracted the disease or not. Speculated to be related to increasing rates of depression, isolation, and perhaps more alcohol consumption. Especially affecting the 50+ age group.
Experts say the best defense is regular physical activity, managing any existing medical problems, and keeping your brain active, and social interactions. It probably applies to the time changes problems also, to to get a little more physical exercise and keep on volunteering to help solve folks’ car problems here. Good for them, good for you.
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There’s a consensus in congress to eliminate daylight savings time. The problem is - no one can agree on which one to use.
If anybody ask me, I’d say to stay on standard time 12 months per year. Worked ok for thousands of years. Seems unlikely anybody who has the power to make such a change cares what I think though … lol …
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I’m all for ending Daylight Saving Time, and keeping the clocks same all year, but some states are proposing the wrong solution: staying on advanced(daylight) time permanently.
I know I am solidly in the minority regarding this point, but as someone who routinely gets up just after six AM most mornings, I most certainly do mind sunrises artificially occurring after 8am(even 9am in some areas) during winter months due to the clocks being permanently one hour fast. I would hate waking up to pitch darkness for 300 out of 365 days of the year, with time advanced one hour year-round!
Ultimately, standard time “12pm = noon” is the best for our long term health and our circadian rhythm, although I proposed, and wrote to my legislators about a compromise: permanent “half hour saving time”, in which the clocks are set permanently one half-hour fast, to satisfy both sides of the issue.
Predictably, such made zero sense to my senators and reps, and all they could respond to me with was a recital of the history of, and alleged ‘benefits’ of, daylight saving time.
I doubt they even understand how DST works, or during which months it is most beneficial.
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I know that I didn’t. I had a job interview in Cleveland… I went into a meeting at 9am and it was dark and the sun was up at about 9:30am when I got out of the meeting.
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Exactly the point I was making.
And something the politicians don’t understand - every time there is an energy crisis, “just throw more Daylight Saving time at it”.
The news media are even more ignorant, honestly believing that DST “makes the days longer” when in effect. Some times you just can’t fix stupid, lol!
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You guys are bringing back bad memories. I actually would just prefer dst year round and forget changing.
Back in the last energy crisis, we worked four day 10 hour days back to back so the buildings could be shut down for four days instead of two. So that was 12 hour days with an hour commute. Genius idea. Musta saved a bunch. Never saw sunlight except for lunch.
Because of how annoying it was to change the digital clock in our '90 Mazda we just left it on standard time, my car I just have to go into the settings and toggle daylight savings on/off.
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@ChrisTheTireWhisperer With the technology we have today, we could have clocks that continually adjust. When we go from December 22 to June 21, the clocks would continuously adjust to be an hour faster by June 21. From June 22 to December 21, the clocks would continuously adjust to lose an hour. In each clock would be a CVT mechanism to make this happen. We wouldn’t have the abrupt one hour change going from standard time to daylight time and from daylight time back to standard time.
Yeah that’s what I call the atomic clock. Gets its time signal from Colorado or someplace and resets automatically. Like a computer. Fun to watch at 2 am. We have several clocks like that and one car. The other car I already changed. Problem is I won’t remember which I changed already.
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I have a suggestion:
Change our lifestyles instead of fooling with clocks.
Think about that, and get back to us.
Twice a year I see news reports and articles about how bad it is to change the clocks. Increase in heart attacks, more traffic accidents, higher risk of this and that. I wonder how much of this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and how much is hype surrounding a simple change of the clock. I just don’t understand the connection. Not saying it’s not true, just that I’m too dense to understand it.
Has the human race really become so fragile that missing bedtime by an hour causes heart attacks and car crashes?
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