European poll on daylight saving

Thank you for sharing this survey, Gawan! I have a hard time with this practice as well (especially in spring when I feel like dragged out for around two weeks due to it) and also think, this practice is not only pretty useless but also detrimental to the overall health. Especially around the summer switch car accidents and the rate of heart attacks have been shown to be increased. Let alone (little) kids and how disrupted sleep patterns could interfere with their development as well as the overall health effects on the population at large.

Therefore I signed as well and made use of the field in the end too, where you can write down additional remarks. I remarked on several aspects like the effects on health, the increased accident rate and that it has been found that the main agenda for propagating this practice, to save energy, has been found to be rather questionable. I added some links to studies and articles in order to back up my remarks either. The following article from Journalist's Resource has a lot of links to studies which put this practice into question: Daylight saving time: Research on health, car accidents and energy usage - Journalist's Resource

Then, there is an article on Psychology Today, which looks into the detrimental effects of DST on the brain: Your Brain on Daylight Savings

And I also found a meta-study, which summarizes lots of studies looking into if the aim of saving energy is actually achieved in a considerable way or not. That study overall rather found the latter to be the case in their conclusion (on page 24):

In any case, the effects of daylight saving time on energy consumption are too small to justify
the biannual time-shifting.

Link: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/74518/1/MPRA_paper_74518.pdf

I finished my remarks by writing, that all that calls for abolishing this practice.
 
As the poll allows adding documents and comments, I searched for sources to back up my vote: For example, this article from Mercola quoted the below study:


"A study, published in 2007... combined surveys from 55,000 people in central Europe with data on 50 individuals' sleeping and wakefulness patterns for eight weeks around the shifts to and from daylight saving time.
The researchers found people never fully adjust their circadian rhythms to the hour shift associated with daylight saving time (or, as it is known in Europe, summer time).
Springing ahead by an hour, however, was most difficult for night owls -- people prone to wake up and go to sleep late, they found."

Transition to daylight saving time reduces sleep duration plus sleep efficiency of the deprived sleep - ScienceDirect


As far as effects of DST on economy are concerned, quality of sleep does decrease productivity (no surprise there, I can very much relate). The below article quotes useful research:

Daylight Saving Time Is Bad For Your Health


Daylight saving time (DST) is about to start, and an interesting thing that you might not realize is how such a small shift in our time can have a large impact on our body clock and our health.
These negative impacts of daylight saving time even cost us real money in lost productivity.

DST starts at 2 a.m. (the clock gets turned forward to 3 a.m.) on the second Sunday in March and ends at 2 a.m. (the clock gets turned back to 1 a.m.) on the first Sunday of November.

That means our clocks spring forward an hour this Sunday, March 9. This is the "bad" time change, since it means we lose an hour of sleep over night.

It was enacted during World War I to decrease energy use. Benjamin Franklin first advocated for the practice in 1784 because he noticed people used candles at night and slept past dawn in the morning. By shifting time by an hour during the summer, they would burn fewer candles and not sleep through the morning sunlight.

The debate still rages as to whether this time-switch does save energy, but along the way we've seen signs that it has negative effects on our health and the economy.

Surprising health impacts

Transitions associated with the start and end of DST disturb sleep patterns and make people restless at night, which results in sleepiness the next day. This is true even during a "Fall Back" period, since when we Fall Back, we might have trouble adjusting to going to sleep "later" after the time change.
One pretty obvious study in Neuroscience Letters found that when people were transitioning their schedules after "springing forward," the quality of their sleep decreased and they slept an average of an hour less per night.

The resulting sleepiness leads to a loss of productivity and an increase in "cyberloafing," in which people muck around more on the computer instead of working. That finding was from a 2012 report in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

During the first week of DST (in the late winter) there's a spike in heart attacks, according to a study in the The American Journal of Cardiology (and other previous studies). That's because losing an hour of sleep increases stress and provides less time to recover overnight.

The opposite is true when we gain an extra hour of sleep. The end of daylight saving time causes a decrease in heart attacks.

Deadly car crashes decrease during DST (the spring, summer, and fall), because it's more likely to be light out when there are more people on the road, for example going to and returning from work or school.

But that's not likely true on the Monday after DST starts. Groggy people driving in the dark are more prone to accidents. Getting some extra sun in the morning, going to sleep earlier or sleeping in slightly could help.

Research has found that having DST all year round could decrease deaths from traffic accidents even more — saving up to 366 lives, according to a 2004 study in the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention.
Accidents at work happen more often and are more severe after springing forward, according to a study of miners published in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2009.

A study published in 2008 in the journal Sleep and Biological Rhythms found an uptick in suicides in Australian men during the first weeks after daylight saving time.

There may be cognitive effects as well. A 2011 study in the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics found that students in counties where DST was observed had SAT scores that were 2% lower than those of students who didn't have to spring forward or fall back.

How DST gets us down
The impacts of DST are likely related to our body's internal circadian rhythm, the still-slightly-mysterious molecular cycles that regulate when we feel awake and when we feel sleepy, as well as our hunger and hormone production schedules.

Light dictates how much melatonin our bodies produce. When it's bright out, we make less. When it's dark, our body ramps up synthesis of this sleep-inducing substance.

Just like how jet-lag makes you feel all out of whack, daylight saving time is similar to scooting one time zone over for a few months.

The problems with DST are the worst in the spring, when we've all just lost one hour of sleep. The sun rises later, making it more difficult to wake in the morning. This is because we reset our natural clocks using the light. When out of nowhere (at least to our bodies) these cues change, it causes major confusion.

Like anytime you lose sleep, springing forward causes decreases in performance, concentration, and memory common to sleep-deprived individuals, as well as fatigue and daytime sleepiness.

Night owls are more bothered by the time changes than morning people. For some, it can take up to three weeks to recover from the sleep schedule changes, according to a 2009 study in the journal Sleep Medicine. For others, it may only take a day to adjust to this new schedule.

That's not all
All of these impacts have economic costs too. An index from Chmura Economics & Analytics, released in 2013, suggests that the cost could be up to $434 million in the U.S. alone. That's an estimated total of all of the health effects and lost productivity mentioned above.

Other calculations suggest this cost could be up to $2 billion— just from the 10 minutes twice a year that it takes for every person in the U.S. to change their clocks. (If you calculate 10 minutes per household instead of per person this "opportunity cost" is only $1 billion.)
 
DST is one more arrogant way to try and ‘fix’ nature. Those who came up with it should be sent to the salt mines.
 
Thank you for sharing this survey, Gawan!
I have voted against DST, of course.
It completely mess with my sleeping habits too, and it's hard enough to deal with the early spring fatigue. It's like double whammy to me.
 
Signed! What a nonsense. It feels natural to me if the sun rises late in winter mornings, but i always hated it when it's getting dark after lunch.
 
Looks like the time switch practice in europe will now be finally abolished! See here.

From the article Pashalis posted:

Massive support for halting daylight saving time

  • Over 80 percent of respondents supported abolishing changing the clocks in summer and winter a survey that ran between July 4 and August 16, according to media reports on the results.
  • Some 4.6 million people took part in the online survey, making it the largest one in EU history.
  • The survey particularly struck a chord with Germans, with three million taking part.
(...) The Commission is set to release the official results of the online poll, which experienced several technical problems due to the high level of interest when it was first launched online.


Yey!! 80% support for abolishing the daylight saving is a really interesting result. If so many people don't like it it makes me wonder how it managed to survive for so long. Well, unless damaging people's health was the objective. In a world where they put fluoride in water and crap in vaccines it isn't very hard to believe.

From the article:
What happens next: Those who are looking forward to future undisturbed sleep will have to wait a while longer. The European Commission, the EU's top executive body, will need to agree on the measure and put forward a draft law on abolishing daylight saving time. The EU Parliament and the bloc's currently 28-member states would also then need to approve the measure.
The Commission is set to release the official results of the online poll, which experienced several technical problems due to the high level of interest when it was first launched online.

I guess it was naive of me to hope it would be gone as of this October. ;-)

Signed! What a nonsense. It feels natural to me if the sun rises late in winter mornings, but i always hated it when it's getting dark after lunch.


Same here mrtn. Even with the daylight saving I still have to get out of bed when it's dark in winter so it does sweet nothing for me. Yet pitch black darkness at 4pm is depressing and tiring.

Not to mention that my body clock goes through a tiny hell each time clocks move.
 
"We carried out a survey, millions responded and believe that in future, summer time should be year-round, and that's what will happen," Juncker told ZDF, adding: "The people want it, we'll do it."

Staying forever in summer time is something that I look forward to. Hopefully, the non-EU countries will follow this resolution.
 
One thing I like about summer time, is that with the clock moved ahead one hour, you get more usable daylight in the evening rather than the morning. On the longest day here, you would have the sunrise at around 4 AM instead of the 5 AM with the change. So I would vote for DST all year long . The only problem with that would be a sunrise just after 9 AM on the shortest days in December.
 
I guess it was naive of me to hope it would be gone as of this October. ;-)

At least the European commission has a meeting every week and since it comes from the president it could be a topic discussed in the next meetings. But this is just theory since bureaucracy can take a long time and I think especially when it comes from the people. Beside, the countries will also have their sayings for example in creating a new time zone in Europe and so on.

And according to the poll it is not said yet on how they like to change the time (keeping forever summertime or switching back to winter time), because the stats of the poll are not published yet (should be released in several weeks) and in the end politicians decide. Since the poll is just about to get a picture of what European citizens want.

The Commission is committed to gather European citizens', stakeholders' and Member States' views on possible changes to the current summertime arrangements.

Public Consultation on summertime arrangements

All in all it is great already that it will be discussed and that at sometime a change will come.
 
Depending where you live in Europe, summer time all year round means that the people living close to the GMT (TU) longitude would have around two hours of difference with their local time (earlier).
A winter time all year round would be much more appropriate...
 
"We carried out a survey, millions responded and believe that in future, summer time should be year-round, and that's what will happen," Juncker told ZDF, adding: "The people want it, we'll do it."

That made me chuckle. :-P
Good occasion for that unelected jerk to play the benign democratic leader.

Apart from that I welcome the decision of keeping daylight saving-time permanently.
 
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