AIBU to think we should NOT put the clocks back this year ?

[BirmaBrite]

Apart from the fact that it means the clock in the car will be wrong for six months, I just think it is a faff that doesn't give any benefit to the vast majority of people.

YABU - just change the clocks you snowflake

YANBU - It's daft and we shouldn't do it anymore

This seems the best compromise!

From RoSPA site

As part of the experiment, road casualty figures were collected during the morning (7-10am) and in the afternoon (4-7pm) in the two winters before the try-out (1966/67 and 1967/1968) and in the first two winters where BST was retained.
The data revealed that approximately 2,500 fewer people were killed and seriously injured during the winters of 1968/69 and 1969/70 compared to the previous two years. This represented a reduction of 11.7 per cent.
In 1971 the experiment was wound up, shelved and quietly forgotten. RoSPA believes this was a mistake. Today, each and every October when the clocks go back, serious and fatal road accidents increase.

This link explains it www.rospa.com/lets-talk-about/2019/october/let%E2%80%99s-go-back-to-1968

The experiment took place from October 1968 - October 1971, during which time the clocks remained on British Summer Time.

It was before my time. My mum remembers the mornings as being dreadfully difficult and depressing.

What people often don't consider is that in the depths of winter, it's dark on the work/school run in the mornings and the evenings whether you are on BST or GMT. It only makes a difference when you are on the curve towards or away from the equinoxes. We already skew this towards lighter evenings - we have 5 months of GMT and 7 months of BST.

Where I live, the day before the clocks change, the sunrise will be at 8am and the sunset at 17:40pm. This then changes to 7am and 16:40 on GMT. If, say, you stayed on BST because you wanted it to be light at 17:00, you'd get approximately three weeks before it was dark again at 17:00 even on BST, and then not light until nearly 9am.

So you are getting darker mornings for very little benefit.

Added to this is lighting costs - most people have to get up at a certain time in the morning, and if it's dark, they need to put the lights on to get ready for work or start working from home and so on. However, in the evenings you have the option of turning the lights off or using lower lighting, watching TV in bed with no lights on, if you want to save on lighting costs.

We are never going to have the sort of climate where people want to be enjoying a long evening outside in winter, it's too cold and damp, lighter evenings are not much use if you want to be indoors anyway.

If I had my way we'd stay on year round GMT, but I think the system we have at the moment is the best compromise for BST fans.

Yes, my Mum told me that too. If you want to keep clocks on the same time all year surely we should stick with GMT and not BST?

I totally agree. I hate the whole clock change thing!

Statistics on road accidents from the time when clocks did not go back in autumn are inconclusive. This is due to UK drunk driving legislation changing at the same time, thus improving road safety for drivers and pedestrians.

And UK statistics are unhelpful anyway as there's almost an hour's difference in sunrise times between the south of England and the north of Scotland so difficult to aggregate in a meaningful way.

But no enlightened society would allow kids to walk in the dark during morning rush hour when the minor inconvenience of an hour's clock change would give them more daylight and improve their chances of arriving safely.

Well if they dropped the idea of putting clocks forwards,/backwards we would be in GMT all year so no otvwont work!

It would be too dark for kids going to school, so no

did they examine the impact on different regions?
eg Scotland had more casualties, but South of England, which is more heavily populated, had less? Or was it done on a countrywide basis?
i suspect the latter

i remember it.

it was absolutely crap if you lived north of London.

I'm in Northern Scotland and I would leave at BST. It makes no difference in the morning. It's dark when we get up anyway. It's dark going to work and school anyway.

A lighter afternoon would have far more benefit.

After school they aren't doing while people who have just woken up are driving to work.

How do you think they all get to school? The roads around here are swarming with children at school run time!

Well I lived north of London and I didn't find it crap. Isn't it amazing that people don't all have the same experience.

Purely selfishly, I'd prefer darker mornings and lighter evenings in the winter.

I’d go for BST all year round and GMT+ 2 in summer.

lighter evenings - useful. What’s the point of lighter mornings?

What's modern, mine's 2009 and set manually.

Ours is from 2025 and changes manually.

2015 I mean.

We should never put the clocks back in winter. It is at best an outdated practice.

When I have travelled in winter to France or the Netherlands where the clocks are one hour ahead, I have experienced first hand how much better it is.

Eh no thanks... don't fancy being at work for almost an hour before sunrise in December!

Even as it is now I'm driving to & from work in the dark in December so not changing the clocks would make no difference to that.

It’s not just Scotland that would be affected when they tried it years ago Liverpool was in darkness too but I’ll happily go independent with Scotland and the north and leave London and the south to it. FREEDOM

Oooh, can we form the United Kingdom of Scotland and Yorkshire?

Absolutely!!!!

The reason people need more light in the mornings is because... light is what wakes you up and sets your circadian rhythm. Getting up in the dark is impossible.

It’s really important to the physiological body to experience light in the mornings. With most people inside artificially lit buildings by 9am morning light before then for as much of the year as possible should be the priority.