13 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Daylight Saving Time

[SoCalDem]

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/sleep/2009/03/...

When clocks spring forward, people lose sleep, have more heart attacks, and might not even save energy
By Ben Harder
Posted March 3, 2009


Americans will set their clocks ahead by an hour this weekend, as daylight saving time begins Sunday. "Springing forward" creates another hour of sunlight in the evening. It also has some effects on health and public safety that many people are unaware of. Interesting facts about daylight saving time include:



1. Officially, it's "daylight saving time," not "daylight savings time." But don't feel bad if you thought there was a final "s" on "saving"; far more people Google the incorrect phrase than the correct one.

2. Daylight saving time has mixed effects on people's health. Transitions into and out of DST can disturb people's sleeping patterns, for example, and make them more restless at night. Night owls tend to be more bothered by the time changes than people who like mornings, Finnish researchers concluded last year.

3. There's a spike in heart attacks during the first week of daylight saving time, according to another study published last year. The loss of an hour's sleep may make people more susceptible to an attack, some experts say. When daylight saving time ends in the fall, heart attacks briefly become less frequent than usual.

4. People are safer drivers during daylight hours, and researchers have found that DST reduces lethal car crashes and pedestrian strikes. In fact, a study concluded that observing DST year-round would annually prevent about 195 deaths of motor vehicle occupants and about 171 pedestrian fatalities.

5. A U.S. law signed by President George W. Bush in 2005 extended the length of daylight saving time by four weeks. It now begins at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday in March. It ends on the first Sunday in November.

snip...for the rest of the list

[Turbineguy]

1. I'm think of adjusting my thermostat

by 30 minutes and leaving it that way.

[EFerrari]

2. Someone wrote a book about DST a few years ago. It was fascinating!

But then, I also liked the one about how the states got their shape.

[SoCalDem]

3. I LOVED that book on BookNotes.. I keep thinking I ought to buy it

and then I forget again.. I have CRS

[Skittles]

4. fucking ridiculous

I work 13 hours ALL NIGHT on time change booting multiple systems and these folk whine about losing an hour sleep?

[AllentownJake]

5. I lived in Indiana during the whether to adopt day light savings time debate

A women who rarely ever spoke in the office stood on her chair and gave a passionate speech about why it would ruin everything. Her last line was if people in New York and Philadelphia (our company headquarters was in Philly) can't figure out what time it is Indiana they can't be that smart.

Being born and raised on the East Coast and having lived in Philadelphia for 4 years I stood up from where I was sitting and said lady, as someone who used to live in Philadelphia, people in Philadelphia could give a flying fuck what time it is here or anything else about the state of Indiana, this isn't exactly a tourist attraction for us people from the East Coast.

I was not really liked that much in that department afterwards.

[SoCalDem]

9. I ws a travel consultant in Michigan City, Indiana, and we stayed on standard time

so we could "stay with" Chicago..since that was the "nerve center" of our business..

[AllentownJake]

12. Michigan City

That place was actually worse than the city I was living in. My ex took me around it and I was like my God, this makes Fort Wayne and Allentown look like paradise.

Nice girl but I'm Glad we broke up, I can't imagine having to spend Holidays in that town.

The most famous person to come out of Michigan City is Chief Justice Roberts, Fuck you Michigan City.

[SoCalDem]

14. actually he came from "Long Beach".. and THEY did not consider

themselves part of "our" community They called us MiSHITTYians..

ever see "Breaking Away".. very appropriate depiction

[AllentownJake]

15. Yeah Indiana was a big culture shock for me

We got our issues on the East Coast but that was the most bat shit insane place I've ever lived.

Fort Wayne had more churches than any other city I've lived in...it also had more strip clubs per capita than the area where I'm from.

It never kind of computed till I just said this place is bat shit insane. I saw my ex's hometown and I thought holy shit this place is even more batshit insane than Fort Wayne.

[Xipe Totec]

6. Can we call it PDSTSD?

(Post Daylight Saving Time Stress Disorder)

[Cha]

7. Thank you for this DST,

SoCal. I know I don't like losing an hour's sleep but the farmers around here love it..so since they grew our food I'm not going to complain.

[stevedeshazer]

10. Why do farmers love it?

I grew up on a dairy farm, and we hated it. The cows sure don't know the difference.

It's just a nuisance.

[Cha]

19. Because they have more

daylight at night to work their produce in the fields.

[ReliantJ]

8. My newspaper has an "s" in it LMAO

[rainbow4321]

11. I never get that extra hour in the Fall anyway

My dogs collective bladders wake me up cuz they don't do DST!

[bbinacan]

13. I love DST

[david13]

16. I don't care one way or another. It just seems

like robbing Peter to pay Paul. Any gain at night is lost in the morning and vice versa. Like fewer car accidents at night? Yeah, but then probably more in the a.m.
dc

[canetoad]

17. Early morning people

get the rough end of the pineapple during daylight saving.

[depakid]

18. Chalk it up to old Ben Franklin

He realized in 1784 that many people burned candles at night yet slept past dawn in the summer, wasting early-morning sunlight.

[pepperbear]

20. Why would night owls be disturbed by the change? Do they have clocks to set? n/t

[Liberal_in_LA]

21. I love the long summer/fall days.

[ThoughtCriminal]

22. One of the benefits of living in Arizona

Not having to deal with the change over.