Ruminations

Feeling Tired? Sleep-Deprived?

"It's what you would consider a modest effect. What's really important is it affects everybody. If you have a large portion of the population that is affected, then you would say even a small effect definitely has a public health impact."

"If it's really DST [Daylight Saving Time] that leads to that increase in traffic accident risk, then we should see that before 2007, the peak in traffic accident risk in spring that has been reported before should move to that week."

"It's hard when you use this large-scale observational data, so it's always really hard for us to say it's really that thing. But this is a novel piece of evidence that further supports our observations."

"Because DST is changing the timing of when you have to get to work -- it doesn't change when the sun comes up, it's just a change of your clock -- you get less morning light and more evening light."

"Translation always takes some time. I think every change is hard. I think now is a good time [to do away with DST]."

Celine Vetter, director, Circadian and Sleep Epidemiology Laboratory, University of Colorado Boulder

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A new study. Which is to say, yet another study. To augment common-sense attitudes that argue against continuation of Daylight Saving Time. Said to have originated with the needs of a farming constituency, a century earlier. And having no place whatever in the world of today, where its seasonal implementation has been identified as a source of making people generally miserable adjusting to the daylight/time change, and bringing harm to a number of people in any community through fatal traffic accidents.

Tomorrow is the day that practise, not purpose, mandates that all clocks in most of North America jump forward an hour, back to Standard Time. The negative health effects outlined by scientists have long been pointed out but studiously ignored by those 'experts' in public policy who administer these long outlived guidelines of preserving light by timing our days differently. The new study published in Current Biology, traces a link between spring's transition to Standard Time with an increase in fatal vehicle accidents in the United States.

Such that, according to the researchers involved, the rate of fatal car accidents increases by roughly six percent in the week following the clocks being moved forward an hour annually, in the United States. Sleep deprivation is pointed to as the logical culprit; the misalignment of circadian sleep rhythms. Dr. Vetter's research team analyzed a database of fatal accidents that occurred in the United States between the years 1996 and 2017, a total of 732,885 cases, documenting date and time of each collision.

Other possible variables exist to determine whether DST was a factor in the accidents that the research team examined; changing weather patterns for one. One factor, however linked as proof of the time change's impact. The duration of daylight saving time in both Canada and the U.S. by four to five weeks took place in 2007. Prior to 2007 the first Sunday in April would begin DST, which would end on the last Sunday in October. Since 2007 DST begins the second Sunday of March, ending on the first Sunday of November.

Researchers found, through analyzing the accident data, that the increase in fatal car crashes certainly did move from April to March in 2007 when DST made its move. In Western time zones, Dr.Vetter noted, the accident rate increases since the sun rises at a later time there than in the east, requiring people to awaken earlier for work or studies and they are then exposed to less morning sunlight. That causes them to feel less rested; a term she has named "social jet lag". The study's conclusion was that DST be abandoned.

A return to Standard Time should be permanent, not only between the designated months of November and March, but throughout all months of the year. The 28 deaths a year caused by the time change, points out Dr.Vetter, could be prevented through abandoning the time change. And there is no reason whatever to remain on daylight saving time, other than inaction. The Province of Saskatchewan stopped switching clocks, preferring to remain in perpetual daylight savings time, since 1966. And that's a traditional farming province.