In the winter, though, in more northern latitudes that would mean going to work or school while it is still very dark out.
If you can only have one of morning and evening in light, morning is probably more important for a couple reasons even ignoring the circadian rhythm considerations.
1. We are more synchronized in morning. In morning you have adults going to work and kids going to school. We are much less synchronized in the evening--young kids come home earliest, then middle and high school kids, then adults. Furthermore, more people stay late at work than go in early to work, so you get further spreading out of the commute home.
With the morning getting heavier, more concentrated traffic, it makes sense to prioritize giving it the light.
2. The morning before the sun comes up tends to be the coldest time of the day. You are much more likely to have icy roads during a predawn commute than during a postdusk commute, further bolstering the case for prioritizing standard time over daylight savings time during winter.
Why can't localities just shift the time work and school starts. Some jobs suit different hours, not everyone works 9-5 anyway, many people work shifts and manage to deal with a varied timetable. This is not rocket science. You do not have to work the same hours as everyone else.
Adjusting clocks by an hour is an absurd workaround that doesn't even suit everyone and causes no end of problems and confusion, it's well past time it was abolished worldwide,
Having people adjust their schedules is absolutely the saner option, but it's likely an infeasible coordination problem. Daycare depends on work, work depends on daycare, and a zillion other interdependencies. The friction against change is really high. Compare that to the coordination problem of having everyone (essentially) keep doing what they're doing, but adjusting the clock. You can impose a clock change, but you can't impose a schedule change.
It's the difference between
- Your office deciding to ignore daylight savings (starting November 1st, ending March 8, we expect employees to reschedule all recurring meetings/work hours/events to an hour earlier, changing 9-5 to 8-4). I can just imagine the shitshow of complaining and bikeshedding.
- Your state asking or requiring offices to change schedules like above. I can't see asking working, and I can't see requiring being a feasible law.
- Your state just saying that 2am is now 1am for a few months.
It's all the same thing from one perspective, but very different from a coordination perspective :(
You don't need to impose a schedule change. People work all sorts of odd hours already. Just stop imposing a schedule change twice a year and people would happily work out any adjustments to hours. Those that truly need to adjust hours for sunlight will do so.
The EU is already planning to do this. The sky will not fall, and life will continue on but without the awkward twice-yearly clock change.
I certainly didn’t downvote him, but I lived in the north and I think it’s nonsense. The reality is you end up going to school or work in the dark anyway because the sun rises later than your schedule. And then, since all the light is in the morning, you go home in the dark too; or at least it’s dark shortly after your commute ends. You basically get zero hours of daylight for several months. This is the entire reason I’m pro-DST-all-the-time.
Noooo, afternoon is more important. That us when people do activities and would have reasonable chance to go outside on sun to get d. You wont take kids on pkayground or take walk before school and work.
In Austin (where I live) the summers are so hot that you go out before 10am, and then it’s too hot to go out again until the sun starts to set. I _absolutely_ go walking before work. My schedule does not seem uncommon either - at least 50% of the people in the high rise I live in do the same.
If you can only have one of morning and evening in light, morning is probably more important for a couple reasons even ignoring the circadian rhythm considerations.
1. We are more synchronized in morning. In morning you have adults going to work and kids going to school. We are much less synchronized in the evening--young kids come home earliest, then middle and high school kids, then adults. Furthermore, more people stay late at work than go in early to work, so you get further spreading out of the commute home.
With the morning getting heavier, more concentrated traffic, it makes sense to prioritize giving it the light.
2. The morning before the sun comes up tends to be the coldest time of the day. You are much more likely to have icy roads during a predawn commute than during a postdusk commute, further bolstering the case for prioritizing standard time over daylight savings time during winter.