House passes bill to enact year-round Daylight Saving Time across the country

Well studies show that early school start times are bad for kids anyway so schools should fix their schedules. Kids also naturally like to stay up later these days so more daylight would better match that rather than keeping awake with artificial light.

I also dispute that site's claim that everyone starts before 8am. Here on the west coast I'd say most jobs start at 9am unless they are retail. A lot of schools have also switched to later start times.

Not to mention: DST is already in effect for 65% of the year.

Permanent DST has been introduced in congress every year since 2018. A few years ago it passed the Senate but the house didn't take it up. This time the house has passed it but who knows if the Senate will take it up. I'd prefer to be on permanent DST but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen.

I hate to say it, but you're the problem. One time is better than switching, but we switch because no matter which time standard we choose, some group of people takes issue. The only way we can get one time standard is if we all let go of our highest preference and allow the second-best thing to succeed. Otherwise we'll be doomed to third-best (devolving into worst--see Indiana and Arizona and all the other carveouts within carveouts) for eternity.

I mostly just want the time change to end, but I definitely prefer DST since the afternoon sun is something everyone can enjoy in the winter. I don't get how dark mornings (when a non-trivial percentage of the population is just asleep anyhow) are worse than a dark afternoon, especially when you'll probably wake up in the dark regardless. Plus sunrise even earlier in the summer is useless.

Kids already go to school in the dark in the winter (at least where I'm from). I can see how in the 70's it was more of an issue to increase the number of dark days because many more kids walked to school than they do now (another poster noted it's 10% of children compared to 50%, not sure if that's correct). And DST would be better for afternoon commutes. Plus DST has been pushed to being used during more and more of the year: the spring switch was in late April in the 70s and early 80s, then early April in the late 80s, now early March (since 2007 I think). 75% of the year is DST, let's just make it 100%.

But hey, the morning people out there are never going to be pleased with year-round DST, just like how people like me will never like standard time. But either is better than what we have right now.

> but we should really stick to Standard time.

There are some arguments to stick with "half-way" time -- 30 minutes in the middle between standard and summer time. It does not necessarily solves all the problems but makes a reasonable compromise with farmers who want standard time and many others who prefer summer time.

Start school and work later, "problem" solved. Also another great argument for WFH, don't waste an hour in commute, spend it in bed getting the rest you need!

I am all for my sundial working 12 months a year.

> dark late into the morning, but it also makes it unsafe for kids going to school.

This is such bullshit.

What is unsafe for kids is human drivers driving their death machines into kids. The solution is not messing with clocks. The solution is convincing human drivers that they should not drive their death machines into kids.

You are presumably based in some location where "standard time" has year-round daylight around the time school starts. Guess what, many people live in locations closer to the poles where this is not the case. What do you do in a location where winter daylight hours are only between (say) 10:00 and 15:00? Have school start later and later, and have school days be shorter and shorter? Do such locations have the sides of their roads littered with child corpses, or do such locations enforce better driving?

Also, even in locations with longer days but all-day school, it's often dark when kids get out of school, especially after any extracurricular activities. At that point it's dark, and the kids are tired after a long school day, and the drivers are also tired after a long day at work. If anything, that would make them even more dangerous. The fact is, for many locations it's simply impossible to enforce that kids only go to and from school in broad daylight. Any problems arising in the dark (not from the dark!) must be solved in other ways than magically wishing for the sun to shine when it simply doesn't.

the solution has always been adjusting the school/business hours as seen fit, not adjusting the clocks.

DST is one of those things our descendants will be baffled by the sheer stupidity of.

THIS. To quote Wikipedia:

> It is a common myth in the United States that DST was first implemented for the benefit of farmers.[40][41][42] In reality, farmers have been one of the strongest lobbying groups against DST since it was first implemented.[40][41][42] The factors that influence farming schedules, such as morning dew and dairy cattle's readiness to be milked, are ultimately dictated by the sun, so the clock change introduces unnecessary challenges.[40][42][43]

DST was never about farmers, it was to conserve energy for the war effort. Farmers also aren't punching a clock at an office. They can start and end work when they want, based on the weather and daylight that suits the work.

It also varies depending on where in a time zone you are. The eastern and western sides of a timezone could see sunrise and sunset at significantly different times.

From what I'm reading, it was a big factor that children were walking to school in the dark. One stat I read was that since that time the percentage of kids walking/cycling to school went from almost 50% to now 10%. Maybe that could make the difference this time around.

There are plenty of northern climate countries that get by just fine without DST. Also, if it’s genuinely a problem in a specific location for some reason, that specific location can just say, “Let’s all start work at 9 rather than 8 for the winter months” rather than impose an absolutely absurd song and dance on the entire time zone.

The reason for permanent daylight savings (versus permanent standard) is to provide for later sunsets in the winter. By clock time, the sun would be rising later (after 8am in many places) but setting later as well giving people some late afternoon or evening sun. Which is better is ultimately subjective, you get short days in the winter regardless when you live far enough north.

The late sunrise can be more dangerous with a lot more people traveling in the dark (especially if there's mixed vehicle, bike, and pedestrian traffic, like around schools). So that's also something to consider, and a drawback to this particular choice.

The golf industry prefers daylight savings: https://gbej.org/golf-industry-fights-to-preserve-daylight-s...

Why do you think it's a bad idea ?

What's the downside other than having to take a minute to update your microwave clock twice a year ?!

We're not agreed. In a few years, we're gonna be. For a while.

There's a life lesson there somewhere.

We'll see if it passes the Senate.

They need to be updated anyway, and always have been: somewhere in the world, someone changes time rules basically every year, or even every few months. All current OSes already have support for stating "locale X will not use daylight savings / will always use daylight saving, starting from day yyyymmdd at hhmm" through simple updates.

Yes there’s databases like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database that track this and that are included in libraries that do the arithmetics. It’s why those libraries are often relatively bulky.

An updated tz database.

The Senate passed in a few years ago[0]... then the House did nothing. Now the House passes is and we have to hope the Senate does something again. If only Congress could get on the same page and do these things at the same time.

[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623...

It's not the step change in time that's the gratest danger of DST, it's the entire time people are waking up early, increasing cancer rates and all-cause mortality: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6436388/

Why would it?

Who is logging in a local time zone rather than UTC?

The sun would come up even earlier without dst. It’s just the earth’s tilt that’s causing the sun to come up earlier after spring, nothing we did to the clocks.