this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
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Fun fact: in the mid '70s the US attempted to go to full year daylight savings time. It was so hated by everyone that we switched back to switching our clocks after very few years
Because a single news story about a single child being hit by a car on the walk to school was blown out of proportion and played on everyone's fears. Kids don't walk to school anymore.
What am I passing when I drive home every afternoon? Geese?
Well if it is in the afternoon then you are seeing them walk home from school.
Go into detail about what the problems were and why everyone hated it.
People with school aged children were upset that their children were leaving for school in the dark.
People had more accidents in the morning (but accidents in the afternoon and evening hours decreased, especially pedestrian fatalities.
They didn't even try it out for a prolonged period of time and a lot of that had to do with the Watergate scandal and the Nixon presidency.
Also the health benefits of switching to Standard time and doing away with DST would work with permanent DST too. The major health problems that are caused by the current model have to do with altering the bodies internal clock, and you get the benefits of not having to change regardless of whether we choose permant Standard time or permanent DST.
For reference purposes, car accidents spike significantly after DST ends, not just when it starts.
I think the main issue with their attempt in the 70's is that they didn't try to change the hours of school and work to make things more workable. We didn't do that because it would have forced major industries to shift things and that seemed like too much work.
This would make things safer in general and fix sleep deprevation and other sleep related maladies in the vast majority of people who aren't morning people.
And having more natural light during the waking hours decreases the amount of electricity used, can decrease heating and cooling bills, etc.
People complain about the idea (either moving permanent to standard time or morning permanently to DST) literally based on vibes. Nobody seems to give it a chance with actual changes to make it work for any length of time.
I'm also going to point out that a lot of the problem full stop is that Americans just do not have significant amounts of free time.
I wasn't actually alive at the time, thanks for those details! I didn't know why they hated it, just that they must have to have switched back so fast.
Yeah, I also wasn't alive (I know most of it from my parents and the internet, but I've also had this conversation on the other place before.
I get the reasons why people like one or the other. I wake up at 3 am for work 5 days a week and I work 10 hour days so my feelings on the matter will be skewed no matter what, but it always seems like a majority of people want to go to standard DST when it's a hypothetical and there's not a good general consensus for why they switch back if it is tried.
I believe Mexico (might be another South American country), did have it and they swapped back due to the "health benefits" but it seems like a lot of the studies around day lights savings time as a whole are relying on supposition and don't have a long term study for the actual effects.
Some studies show more car accidents, some show less, some show nuance. some studies show better or more economical use of utilities like water and rlectro, some show the opposite, or that there is no change.
Some studies show health benefits but those studies assume we don't change sleeping schedules and so on to accommodate/ take advantage of more light, and often the health detriments are based on swapping back and forth twice a year.
Most of this comment I made after reading more articles on it rather than going off memory from the last time I had this conversation, and so what I say here may not necessarily match up with what's in the original comment.
If I remember I'll try to go back up and change that comment to better reflect the new info.