posted on Nov, 1 2014 @ 11:50 PM
DST was designed to give people more time in sunlight, and ostensibly to conserve energy—but many prominent studies have proven we get little if any
benefits from the practice. A U.S. Department of Transportation study in the 1970s concluded that total electricity savings associated with daylight
saving time amounted to about 1 percent in the spring and fall months—and that was offset by the increase in air-conditioner use. Experts say that
traffic accidents tend to spike the first Monday after daylight saving time, as motorists struggle with an hour less sleep and darker early morning
road conditions.
And get this: DST can kill you. During the first week of DST, there's a spike in heart attacks, according to a study in the American Journal of
Cardiology. The end of daylight saving time causes a decrease in heart attacks. According to a 2004 study in the journal Accident Analysis &
Prevention, up to 366 lives could be saved a year if we abolished this silly back-and-forth system.
Okay, you might be saying to yourself about now: what about SUNSHINE? "Why would you want to deny us our precious extra hour of direct sunlight, you
weather fascist?" Here's the thing: we can have it both ways! As it stands now, eight months of the year we're "saving" daylight, so we're
almost there—will winter really feel all that different if we were saving daylight then as well? Why don't we just adopt the time frame we call
"daylight saving time" as regular old "time"? Or vice-versa, whatever. Just pick one already!