Permanent Daylight Savings Time (3.Viewing)

Anyone else in favour?

I'm hoping Ontario will be next

Come on Mr Ford.... do something useful!!

I never understood the whining about the time change, I've never thought it was a big deal. But unless its Canada-wide, I'm not in favor. Its going to be annoying to be 2 hours difference from Alberta, and 4 hours difference from EST for half the year.

I'm moving to BC

This should be Canada wide.

silentg said:

This should be Canada wide.

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Agreed, if only because it would save a lot of lives, injuries and various mishaps, which have been proven to skyrocket on the Monday after the time shift.

From Google:

Accidents, particularly traffic crashes and workplace injuries, significantly increase in the days following the spring "spring forward" time change due to sleep disruption and circadian rhythm misalignment. Studies show up to a 23% rise in traffic accidents on the Monday after Daylight Saving Time (DST) begins.

Specifically, it leads to a 6% increase in fatal car accidents in the weeks following the change. up to a 5.7% increase in workplace injuries, a temporary rise in heart attacks and strokes immediately following the time shift, and a very significant rise in pedestrian danger from drowsy people driving cars, especially on their way home from work.

According to insurance stats, in ultra-dense cities like Toronto, the jump in the accident rate is even higher. But as Ford likes to say, business interest (more daylight shopping hours) trumps personal injuries and mayhem, so I don't think we'll see a standard time until he's booted out.

jesus, everyone knows its coming, and its only 1 hour. I guess we really need to bubble wrap everyone now days, eh? Are people that inflexible (or some other words come to mind) that they can't handle a one hour time shift? For fuck sakes, we should permanently ban all travel outside of your own timezone if people can't handle it. Or maybe we force travellers to only travel west so they can gain an hour rather than lose an hour. So if you want to travel to from BC to Alberta, you can only travel west, one hour per day, until you make it all they way around the globe. This way these absurd timezone transitions won't kill you.

And I know that these are "stats", but it really makes me wonder if there is something else going on? Stats can certainly be manipulated to prove an agenda. Do the stats also show a similar drop in accidents in the fall when you get an extra hour of sleep?

In all honesty, I'm not advocating for either scenario as I don't really give a shit either way. I will survive either way - I just find it hard to believe that society is that stupid. Or maybe I just answered my own question. I guess it is. But this kinda feels like a media manufactured crisis where you would probably really not give a shit either, but some talking head convinced you that you should be? Is this really that big of a deal?

rlm said:

Is this really that big of a deal?

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Yes

Daylight Saving Time (DST) is estimated to cost the U.S. economy over $430 million annually in lost productivity and increased operational costs. The biannual time change is associated with increased workplace injuries, higher energy consumption, and adverse health effects, causing many to argue it is a "net negative" for society.

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Lost production, safety, clocks not set, its an insane stupid amount of money to spend. It's time to do away with the most stupid thing we have to do twice yearly.

rlm said:

jesus, everyone knows its coming, and its only 1 hour. I guess we really need to bubble wrap everyone now days, eh?

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Yes you do. Haven't you read about the morons in Toronto speeding on the off/on-ramps and then driving right off the edge into 100km/h traffic below? It's becoming commonplace to see it on the news and posted on line. These videos look like excerpts from The Road Warrior and Toronto should install signs on these overpasses saying "Watch Out for Falling Cars".

That's what Canada has become over the past decade, a country of people who simply cannot use an elevated on- or off-ramp without driving right off it. So imagine these idiots with 1 hour less sleep.

MacMan said:

Lost production, safety, clocks not set, its an insane stupid amount of money to spend. It's time to do away with the most stupid thing we have to do twice yearly.

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I agree its probably not necessary. I'm not sure where this money is being spent, but if its due to lost productivity, we should really ban social media first.

And I'd bet that the stats are skewed and overstated. Media needs to conflate everything for more drama. So do people with an agenda or to just be self-important. You hear the stats and think that stats can't lie, but they can be manipulated, and equally important stats can be omitted to push a specific agenda.

For example, if there's a spike in heart attacks on Mondays after the DST change, there's surely a decrease in heart attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday. So the heart attacks were going to happen, but they shifted a few days earlier. The net result is the same number of heart attacks either way. Net result - nothing.

This same phenomena happens with other events too. Like hot weather killing old people. They die a week earlier, but they were going to die regardless. So the net change in deaths is effectively zero, but the timing was just shifted to cause a blip. I would bet the same thing happened during covid too. And you can be damn sure the media jumps on those blips to get you riled up about nothing.

So in BC during winter, we'll lose an hour of daylight during the morning rush hour commute, and we'll gain an hour of daylight during the evening rush hour commute. Summer will be pretty much unchanged due to long days. So I guess one big question is, what is worse?

a) the new scenario of driving-to-work-in-the-dark-while-groggy

b) the current scenario of driving-home-from-work-in-the-dark-after-working-all-day

I guess time will tell. Will there be a net improvement or will it simply be a shift from more evening accidents to more morning accidents?

Personally, I would think a) would be the worst scenario, but I recognize that would be based on my own habits. If you worked a physically gruelling job, b) might be worse.

rlm said:

For example, if there's a spike in heart attacks on Mondays after the DST change, there's surely a decrease in heart attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday. So the heart attacks were going to happen, but they shifted a few days earlier. The net result is the same number of heart attacks either way. Net result - nothing.

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I doubt it's a linear as that, and it's a fallacy to imagine that all these heart attacks affected otherwise sick people with high risk factors who we all a day or two away from dying.

The time change totally screws up your Circadian rhythms, which can significantly impact heath, leading to short-term cardiovascular issues like increased rate of strokes and heart attacks, as well as a long-term higher risk of cancer and diabetes, and can affect otherwise healthy individuals. It's a sudden shock to the system, like an electrolyte imbalance, which can also be fatal. This is not made-up and it's real science with some very real negative outcomes.

It's similar to being hit in the chest (Commotio cordis). Each time you get hit, there is a chance that your heart will stop beating and you'll go into cardiac arrest and die. You could be 30 and healthy or 90 and unhealthy, and with the right timing, it will kill you either way. I've personally witnessed this in a softball game when I was a teenager, where the pitcher got hammered in the chest with a line drive and just collapsed. Scary stuff.

I do agree that the groggy driving vs driving home tired in the dusk will likely be a wash, as idiots gotta be idiots, but at least with no time changes, the avoidable health risks can be taken out of the equation.

DomainRecap said:

I doubt it's a linear as that, and it's a fallacy to imagine that all these heart attacks affected otherwise sick people with high risk factors who we all a day or two away from dying.

The time change totally screws up your Circadian rhythms, which can significantly impact heath, leading to short-term cardiovascular issues like increased rate of strokes and heart attacks, as well as a long-term higher risk of cancer and diabetes, and can affect otherwise healthy individuals. It's a sudden shock to the system, like an electrolyte imbalance, which can also be fatal. This is not made-up and it's real science with some very real negative outcomes.

It's similar to being hit in the chest (Commotio cordis). Each time you get hit, there is a chance that your heart will stop beating and you'll go into cardiac arrest and die. You could be 30 and healthy or 90 and unhealthy, and with the right timing, it will kill you either way. I've personally witnessed this in a softball game when I was a teenager, where the pitcher got hammered in the chest with a line drive and just collapsed. Scary stuff.

I do agree that the groggy driving vs driving home tired in the dusk will likely be a wash, as idiots gotta be idiots, but at least with no time changes, the avoidable health risks can be taken out of the equation.

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Heart attacks simply don't happen to people with no health issues. They happen to people who didn't know they had an issue. Thinking a bad night's sleep causes heart attacks is the fallacy.

Being hit in the chest is major physical trauma. Apples and oranges.

Check out "mortality displacement" - that's the the DST and heat wave affect I'm talking about. Its a pretty logical effect when you think about it.

As for health impacts from circadian rhythm disruptions - sure, I can buy that there is some effect - as with any other unhealthy lifestyle factors. But only as a long term buildup - not a one-time event. Our bodies are much more resilient to small fluctuations than that. So if those recurring long term disruptions build up and cause an underlying condition, then the heart attack is triggered by a small fluctuation (like DST), then you really can't blame the small fluctuation, as there would have been another small fluctuation that would have done the trick anyways. That's mortality displacement. And the longer time frame that you average those deaths out over, the more the spike disappears.

Also, how many nights a year to do you have a bad sleep? Does anyone get 365 days good sleep a year? Not even close. Gotta be at least once a week for an average person. So add in one short day for DST. So now you have 53 nights of bad sleep instead of 52. Big deal.