It’s 7:45 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Time) and it’s still dark at the Masson household in Lafayette. And we still have a week and a half until we finally return to “Standard” time. These dark mornings blow.
Masson's Blog
It’s 7:45 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Time) and it’s still dark at the Masson household in Lafayette. And we still have a week and a half until we finally return to “Standard” time. These dark mornings blow.
You’ll get no argument from me. Every weekend I watch my family “linger” in bed until sunrise (or later). Every Monday they have to leave “sun time” and push themselves back onto “clock time”, with poor results. I have the impression that my wife and kids are not alone in this practice. Mondays were never great, but it really strikes me, both at home and at the office, that things have become worse with “daylight saving”. Productivity in our office just flat stinks on Mondays. Folks seem to be suffering from pronounced cases of weekend “jet lag”.
I’m still cycling in when I can, and the thing I am dreading is the second run of sunrise blindness.
I ride west to east in the morning. When the road goes right into the sun, many drivers can’t see me. Normally, it is a twice-a-year thing. Now we have it four times a year.
At least when it is dark, my reflective jacket and flashing LED make me a little easier to see. When the sun is in the driver’s face, there isn’t much I can do.
Can someone remind me again WHY we change for 4 months (Nov-Feb)? Isn’t it something to do with kids standing in the dark waiting on the bus that we’re trying to avoid? If that was the case, then why have we not switched off already? Also, if that was the case, why are we on Eastern time?
EDT kills people in Indiana. Now I just need some facts to back me up. Hopefully I don’t become one of those stats…
Jason,
Compiling the stats you need is a very subtle business. For example, the Monday following the annual “spring forward” to DST shows a strong correlation with increased traffic accidents and traffic fatalities, but the big jump in accidents and deaths occur in the afternoon, not in the morning when its dark. The conclusion of the researchers was that fatigue brought on by the change to daylight saving was a bigger contributor than was darkness.
There is some reason to believe that essentially permanently forcing people to get up well before sunrise is disruptive to sleep patterns and contributes to late in the day fatigue. Consistent with this is the fact that more accidents occur after work than before work. DST supporters will argue that having light after work saves lives since sunlight will compensate for the fatigue levels, but I think the research better suggests that “sleeping in” until sunrise would make us fresher in the afternoon and evening and less likely to get into accidents. Fatigue causes more accidents than does darkness.
Traffic accident analysis in this country doesn’t measure for when people get out of bed, but the Monday after the change to DST is suggestive. I would be interested in someone looking at Indiana, Michigan and Kentucky Eastern Time Zone afternoon accident rates for Mondays versus other weekdays.
SOunds like heaven. My 4:30 sunsets are right around the corner. While you have to wait an extra hour for light to arrive, I will leave work in darkness and have to wait 14 hours for light’s return.
Seems like a return to the “old” way would make all of us a bit happier.
I for one am thankful the fall changeover was moved back enough to keep a little early evening daylight for Halloween. I always thought it was downright stupid to move the darkness up just in time for all those kids out trick or treating.
I love daylight savings time. Sorry, didn’t grow up in Indiana.
For what it’s worth, 132,000 Hoosiers in 5 counties will not change clocks November 4,but by not changing clocks will effectively change TZs ,from CT to ET. I’ll be coming to Indiana shortly after the time change and it will still seem dark mornings.
It makes it really hard to get up in the morning. Or ride my bike to work. It is just crazy.
CJ, help me understand since I’m new to DST.
Why is it safer to have the kids in the dark every day for a couple of weeks in the morning instead of a single night?
Also, from what I remember of being a kid, I didn’t want to go during the day once I got past 6 years old. I wanted to scare people, and you don’t do that with the sun shining.
Of course it just me, but I enjoy having the extra sunlight in the evening when I get home from work and do stuff with the kids in the yard as opposed to having the sunlight in the morning when I’m getting up/going to work. I’ll gladly sacrafice that daylight for later in the day….
It looks like people are again disregarding the incredible Indiana economic miracle that has been the direct, obvious result of DST?
You know, the one that was so obvious to all right thinking people?
What? Oh, never mind, then.
At least in my neighborhood, any kids out in a dark morning are probably waiting for their bus. Halloween brings so many kids of all sizes out into the street at night that it just always seemed dumb to me to change back on what was always the Sunday before Halloween.
Central Time, baby — you all want to be on Central Time, but you don’t know it.
Yes, many of us do, D T. :)
I’ve lived in Valparaiso and Chicago, so I know CT in places which are comparable to Indiana in how far west they are, and I’ll take CT in a heartbeat over ET any where in Indiana.
Actually, since I have no windows in my classroom.. where I spend from 7 AM -5 PM most days.. I fail to see the sun for weeks in the winter.. except for the hour or so in the evening. That’s why I like to go out to lunch in February at least once a week.. to reconnect to nature.
So, Doug, what do you do in December and January, when on Standard Time the sunrise occurs at pretty much the same time as now? Your complaint about Standard Time mornings “blowing” would be every bit as appropriate as your current argument.
I deal with it. But, prior to DST (and especially prior to extended DST starting this year), I basically only had to deal with extremely late sunrises once per year. Now I have to do it in the fall, in mid-winter, and I presume in the early spring.
Let’s see if I can do this right. Under year round Eastern Standard Time (or CDT, if you prefer), the sun rises later than 7 a.m. in Tippecanoe Couty for the following period of time:
October 17 through March 15.
Under DST, post-7 a.m. sunrises occur for the following:
August 17 – April 21
—-
Now let’s do post 8 a.m. sunrises:
Under standard time – December 10 – January 29
Under DST –
October 17 – November 4
December 10 – January 29
March 9 – March 15
DST. Bah. Noon should always be 24 hours away from noon.
Remember when “My Man Bitch” was arguing how Indiana was out of step with the rest of the country because we didn’t observe DST. (Of course that was just a ruse to get us into EDT for the lobbyists with their fat campaign contributions and more than likely out and out payola.) Well now instead of being “out of step” with two other states Indiana is the only state that lies entirely geographically in one time zone(CT) yet observes another(ET).
Good job Mitchie. Nice lookin’ out for your peeps (Big business and lobbyists)
I imagine the complaint is endless. Everybody has a different internal clock, and there’s no satisfying everybody.
By nature, I’m not a morning person, and a lack of sunlight becomes physically depressing. Given my druthers, I would wake up at 9am each day and go to bed at 1am. For me, the worst aspect of the shorter days is the early nightfall. So, I really love DST. It works with my internal clock. But that’s just me, and I’ve never assumed that policy should be drawn to satisfy me.
Alas, business does not allow me my druthers, so I wake up three hours earlier than I like. Where’s my benevolent dictator when I need him?!
“By nature, I’m not a morning person, and a lack of sunlight becomes physically depressing. Given my druthers, I would wake up at 9am each day and go to bed at 1am. For me, the worst aspect of the shorter days is the early nightfall. So, I really love DST.”
I’m sorry Mike but as a position statement that ranks a “zero” for logic. First, we don’t observe DST when days are shortest so DST isn’t doing you any good. Why then do you “love it” given it is making you get up in the dark much of the year? Second, what sets your internal clock, the government or the sun? If we “did” EDT in January sunrise would come after 9:00 a.m. most of the month, so, given your druthers, would you get up at 10:00 a.m.? Sounds to me like the worst aspect of “shorter days” are that they are short.
At least the “Standard” time protion of the year is now three weeks shorter. (I vastly prefer CDT; as this is exactly like the EST I grew up on.) Living on the extreme eastern edge of central time, I hate how early the sun sets (especially since I have church meetings that last until 9:00 pm-five hours after it is dark!)
With young children, I am glad that it will be light out during most of Trick or Treating-and on the spring end the time change will never happen again on an Easter Sunday.
Doug, it could be worse. I lived in Minnesota for four years. That far north, we had about three or four weeks where the sun rise after 8:00 am and set before 4:00 pm
Our winters really aren’t any longer with EDT. It just seems like it.
Back in 1918, when the daylight craze started, most households were lucky to have one clock. I stopped counting ours when I got to twenty (ran out of toes and fingers). Last Sunday, my computer and DVD recorder clocks reverted to standard time as they had been programmed to do on the last Sunday in Oct. I still can’t set
my car’s clock without looking at the manual.
There are 2.4 million households in Indiana. If each household needs a 1/2 hour in March and again in November it amounts to 2.4 million hours a year just to set our personal clocks.
The only advantage we gained by transfering from central to eastern was we didn’t have to mess with reseting our clocks twice a year. WWII bomber crews asked themselves “Is this trip really necessary?”. We should ask ourselves ” Does EDT cost more than its worth?”