We need to get rid of daylight savings time.
Okay, I admit, this might not be the most relevant time to discuss this. After all, daylight savings was exactly 6 days ago, and most Americans have forgotten about it. Plus, you have probably heard this point a million times before. There are plenty of familiar arguments: for example, the health implications of shifting our sleep schedules by one hour are not good, especially when we lose one hour of sleep.
According to a study by Zhang, et al., the rates of car accidents, sucide rates, and even heart attacks significantly increase—as much as 10 percent—when we lose an hour of sleep [1]. And many Americans and lawmakers alike find daylight savings to be unnecessary. In November of 2019, Illinois senators passed a bill that would have kept Illinois on “daylight savings”; that is, the time that we are on during the summer. (Unfortunately, this bill stalled, and any such bill would need to get federal approval first, as per the Uniform Time Act of 1966.)
The fact is, daylight savings time is confusing and unnecessary. Just look at this map of Arizona, one of two states that does not observe daylight savings (the other being Hawaii) [2]:
The cause of the confusion? Arizona and the Hopi Reservation do not observe daylight savings, but the Navajo nation, which surrounds the Hopi Reservation, does. If we got rid of daylight savings, then this wouldn’t be a problem.
This issue isn’t unique to Arizona. Consider this map of the countries that observe daylight savings (countries that do are in blue and orange):
As you can see, most of America and Europe observe it, but not most other countries. About half of Australia observes it, which seems incredibly confusing to Australians. Asia, home to half of the world’s population, does not observe daylight savings in any capacity. As a matter of fact, you can see all of the countries in light gray, which means they used to have daylight savings but abandoned it, often for good reason. China experimented with it from 1986-92 but ultimately decided to not use it. Furthermore, countries can’t even agree on when to observe daylight savings! The UK turns their clocks one hour ahead on the last Sunday of March, while the US does so on the second Sunday.
Another issue with daylight savings time (warning: this has almost no practical significance, but I find it incredibly annoying) is that people often refer to the wrong time zone. For example, during the summer, when we are in daylight savings, it is proper to say “CDT”, or “central daylight time”, rather than “CST”, or “central standard time”. Although most people will understand what you mean, the two times are NOT the same! CDT is one hour ahead of CST.
Let’s use a concrete example to illustrate my point. Say you scheduled a meeting for today at 7 pm CDT. That is the same as EST (eastern standard time)—you’re now (technically) off by a full hour. Now, if we simply got rid of daylight savings time, then we wouldn’t have this problem: I have never seen anyone use CDT when they meant CST, for example, so everyone using CST would work out well.
So why do we have daylight savings to begin with? Well, according to National Geographic [3], the roots are historical, as are most flawed systems. In 1895, an entomologist (someone who studies insects) proposed the idea of shifting our clocks to have more daylight during the day. Similarly, the Germans implemented daylight savings during World War I as a way to cut down on lighting costs. However, these arguments are not nearly as relevant now. Nowadays, lighting is ubiquitous, and America has some of the cheapest electricity in the world.
In short, getting rid of daylight savings would be good for our health, save us quite the headache, and the historical reasons for keeping it are no longer valid.
Hi Geoffrey,
Having finished reading your blog post, I still have some questions. I’m not sure exactly what the time difference is between Europe and America, but say America is 9 hours behind. If America, as you mentioned observes daylight saving on the 2nd Sunday of March, then does that mean for that short period of time, until England also observes it on the last Sunday, the two countries must operate under the assumption that they are separated by 8 hours? I’ve never been the greatest at math but this has me even more confused than my statistics homework :’)
Sai