Update 11/2/2018 4:20 pm CDT: in writing below about the time of day of the fatal accident in Indiana, I had incorrectly assumed that all of the state is on Central Time. Not true; clusters of counties in the northwest and southwest corners of the state are on Central Time, while the rest of the state, including Fulton County where the accident occurred, is on Eastern Time. Many thanks to Tom Blackburn for pointing this out. I've corrected the post below.
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You probably know that early Sunday morning, we in the US (except Arizona and Hawaii) need to set our clocks back by an hour, and thereby revert from daylight saving time to standard time.
I've been an early riser since I left college, so I've generally liked this weekend and loathed its evil twin in the spring. After a few years, as a young adult, of investing emotionally in the topic and boring my family and friends with my twice-annual alternating hosannas and laments about falling back and springing ahead respectively, I've come to understand that time changes are temporary nuisances that disrupt my body cycle for 2-3 days at the most, after which life marches on.
But.
I don't know if it was national news, but in this local area, one of the big stories of this past week is a tragedy in northern Indiana, in which three elementary school age siblings were struck and killed by an oncoming vehicle as they crossed a two-lane rural highway to board their school bus. The school bus's stop sign arm was extended, but apparently the driver in the oncoming lane, a young woman who works in church ministry, saw neither the extended stop sign nor the children. She stopped after the accident and cooperated with investigators. A witness reports she was not speeding, and the police have said that they don't believe she was intoxicated. She's now charged with reckless homicide. The details are here.
There are a couple of details from the incident that may be worth having a conversation about. The children were struck at approximately 7:15 am. And the driver of the vehicle that struck the children had its headlights on. Those two items are consistent with what I noted myself this week: at the time of day when the accident occurred, it's still quite dark outside. According to Google, on the day the children were killed (Tuesday October 30th), the sun rose in my suburb of Chicago, which is on Central Time, at 7:22 am. Fulton County, IN, where the fatal accident occurred, is on Eastern Time, so 7:15 Eastern Time would be the equivalent of 6:15 pm Central Time - over an hour before sunrise. Even allowing for the difference in geography (Fulton County seems to be approximately 100 miles due east and a bit south of Chicago), Fulton County would have been dark outside at the time of the accident.
In the wake of this week's accident, it occurred to me that, had we already transitioned from daylight saving time to standard time, it would have been considerably lighter outside at 7:15 am - not yet sunrise, but certainly less dark outside. That doesn't guarantee that the accident would have been averted, but the risk would have been at least somewhat reduced.
That is not completely idle what-iffing: until Congress passed a law in 2005 that lengthened daylight saving time on both the front and back ends of the calendar year, the day of the fatal accident would have landed in the standard time portion of the year.
The conventional wisdom of AM talk radio hosts is that daylight saving time is for the benefit of farmers, who want the extra time in evening to work in the fields, whereas standard time is for the schoolchildren who have to board buses early in the morning. In point of fact, this article suggests that farmers don't like daylight saving time; the chief advocates of our modern system of twice-yearly clock changes were a couple of social elites, including President Wilson, who were avid golfers and wanted additional daylight for afternoon and evening tee times. Certain big businesses also favor daylight saving time; 7-Eleven reportedly was one of the movers of the 2005 legislation.
But speaking as one who crossed a rural two lane road to board an early-morning school bus during my own elementary school years, I can attest that the safety benefits of standard time for schoolbound children in the mornings are real. I'd rather see the annual split reversed: let standard time run throughout the school year. Or better yet, let's just stay on standard time all year round.
More: https://www.businessinsider.com/daylight-saving-time-is-deadly-2018-3
ReplyDeleteHeart attacks go up in spring, down in fall. The older you get, the worse it is. It also creates other hazards, as your story notes. Since the.invention of the incandescent light, there has been no real reason for DST. I say get rid of it.
Dang now, Jean, the Florida legislators voted this year to make DST permanent. In Florida we SHOULDN'T be falling back on Sunday. We should be sitting smugly still. BUT the U.S. Congress -- busy keeping the gummint open -- did not APPROVE yet, as lawyers say it has to, before we can do what our Republicans duly and dully voted to do and Gov. Red Tide Rick done signed.
ReplyDeleteThat would make us an hour earlier than New York (boo) and two hours earlier than Texas (Yay) all winter and even with New York and one ahead of Texas in the summer.
We want permanent DST; Jim wants permanent CST, and you must be in EST and want it, if I have this figured out. But what you want depends on where you are. We happen to be 'way west in the Eastern time zones (we are dead south of Pittsburgh, and WEST of all South American capitals, by the way). Chicago is close to the EAST side of Central Time.
Look: The whole time thing was cooked up by the railroads so they couldn't leave Chicago at 6 p.m. and arrive in Detroit at 5:35 p.m., which is the sort of thing they were doing. And, Jim, are you sure the accident was on CDT? At one time, part of Indiana was on Eastern time even though most of the state was on Central time, and that made all Hoosiers angry. In Florida, the Panhandle slops over into Central time, which is why folks in Pensacola get ticked off when the networks call Florida's election while they are still voting.
We could go back to the pre-railroad days and leave it up to mayors and councilmen what time it is in each town. So it could be 6 p.m. in Chicago, 6:20 in Evanston, 6:10 in Wilmette, 6:30 in Winnetka, 6:13 in Sheboygan and 5:55 in Milwaukee all at the same time. Or we can continue to go through life with half of us unhappy. I suspect we will do the latter.
Tom, thank you! You're right (and I was wrong) about Indiana time zones. I've updated the post.
DeleteIf folks are curious about Indiana, time zones and observation of daylight saving time (all of which is more complicated than it should be, but not as complicated as it used to be), this site has more information.
https://www.timeanddate.com/time/us/indiana-time.html
And now, scrolling down a bit farther at that site and making the entire map visible on my screen, I see there are also some counties clustered around Evansville that also are on Central Time. Be right back, gotta correct the post again. By the time I get those details accurate, daylight saving time will be over.
Ok, I think I've got the Indiana ET / CT thing figured out. It may change the point I'm making, although I think I'm still thinking about this the right way.
DeleteThe accident occurred at 7:15 am Eastern Time, which is the same as 6:15 am Central Time (the time zone in which I live). 6:15 CT / 7:15 ET at this time of year, it's pretty dark outside. Had it been 7:15 EST rather than EDT when the children went to get on the bus, it wouldn't have been pitch dark out; it still would have been pre-sunrise, which isn't fully light but still a good deal lighter outside than an hour earlier. On the principle that lighter outside is safer than darker outside when it comes to seeing small children, I think my falling-back supposition is still worth thinking about.
Now: (and I'm not an expert on this stuff), the way cones and rods work in our eyes, it's thought that the pre-sunrise twilightish level of light also is considered dangerous for driving, so maybe my point isn't as strong as I thought it was before Tom enlightened me on my time zone confusion. If y'all think my hypothesis is wrong, just say so, and I'll take my beating in good grace.
There are all kinds of factors to consider:
DeleteTwilight vs. daylight versus night time
overcast vs. clear
level of visibility (mist, fog)
reflectivity of clothing
color of clothing
background
age of driver (I knew by my 40s, my scotopic night vision was already degraded).
distractions like texting and entertainment
Possibly no one cause, like a plane crash.
Best clothing for kids would be like a safety vest. Flourescent colors in daylight. Retroreflective material like 3M Scotchlite for night.
Forgot to mention contrast if clothing. Why prisoners were dressed in black and white stripes until flourescent orange came along.
DeleteTwilight is awful to drive in because the headlights don't help.
DeleteIn Michigan, it remains light until 10 p.m. in summer, but when we "fall back" to regular time, it is dark by 5:30 p.m. The farmers who work day jobs like DST because more daylight in the evening for farm work. But most harvesters now are equipped with bodacious headlights, and I see them working well past dusk.
Because of how short the days are here near 45° latitude (about 9 hours on the winter solstice), it's going to be twilight/dark during morning or evening commute no matter how you diddle the clocks.
Conversely, summer days are so long you have about 15 hours of daylight.
It's not worth messing up internal bio-rhythms or whatever for DST.
Stanley - I've been wondering whether geography played a role: whether the bus was stopped just past a curve, or just over a rise that would have been blind to oncoming traffic. I've found some photos of the scene that suggest that the state highway isn't a long straightaway; one of the photos shows the relative positions of the bus and the other vehicle, and it seems to me that the other vehicle had rounded a curve before coming upon the bus on a short straight stretch before approaching another curve. Whether that straight stretch was long enough for an attentive driver to assess the situation (school bus / safety arm / children crossing), I'm not certain; but based on the photos, it looks like there would have been sufficient time.
DeleteI read or heard on one of the news reports that the driver of the other vehicle had a young child in her vehicle as well; a child in a back or middle seat in a child seat can be another source of distraction.
The school district has announced it is relocating the bus stop; apparently there had been quite a few complaints from parents over the years about the location of that one; but whether the concern was a case of having to cross a state highway, or other factors like curves in the road exacerbated it, the news stories I've found don't say.
Photos of the scene here:
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/education/2018/10/31/school-district-moving-bus-stop-after-deadly-crash/1836983002/
California has a proposition on Tuesday's ballot to do the same thing. If it passes, one HUGE portion of this country will be on DST. Of course, unless the Dems take control of the House, there is no way that the Teapublicans will OK anything that True Blue California wants to do.
DeleteI knew those $#@! railroad captains of industry were behind it somewhere. A bunch of us disgruntled leftist geezers are re-reading John Dos Passos's American trilogy, and it's clear alla this is a capitalist plot.
ReplyDeleteJean, I found Manhattan Transfer at the library when I went looking for the trilogy because I felt an urge to re-read it. I had to settle for Manhattan Transfer because the trilogy is nowhere near as important as Daniel Silva, to judge by his shelf space relative to Dos Passos'.
ReplyDeleteJim, one ongoing argument among people in our part of the eastern time zone has to do with school schedules and kids waiting for the bus in the dark. The kids who have to wait for the bus in the dark all winter are the high school kids even after daylight savings has ended. Some of the parents don't like this. The school system here says that they have to do it that way because the buses have to make three runs - the earliest for high schools, the second for the middle schools, and the latest for the elementary schools when it is bright daylight. They can't afford to double or triple the number of buses and drivers. Our county is suburban, but it stretches out and there are some rural areas and longer bus rides to school. But even in the close in suburbs, where the time to get to school is shorter, the high school kids are out waiting for the bus before daylight in the winter.
ReplyDeleteWe are night owls, and I always hated getting up in the dark all those years when we had to for school and work. Have always loved daylight savings. Now that we are retired, we can indulge our natural body clocks more easily. When we stay up late (which is most of the time), we can now sleep in until it's daytime! Yay! Back in the work/school days, we stayed up late and got up at 5:30 and so were chronically exhausted.
We vacation on the west coast of Florida most years. We have noticed that when we are there, we get an additional 35-40 or so minutes of daylight in the evenings because it's west of here, even if in the same timezone. Which we actually love. I guess next winter we will have an even longer day to enjoy the beach and mild weather!
Anne - our local high school district has taken seriously the research that reports that teens need more sleep, and consequently has pushed back the start time for high school. (Whether high school kids actually get more sleep or just stay up later in the evenings would be interesting fodder for a follow-up study).
DeleteThe buses-need-to-make-triple-runs argument wouldn't get as much traction around here as it seems to in your community; I think the school districts would figure out new logistics, which would mean changes, probably in the less convenient direction for local families, but the districts would tell the bus companies and local families to lump it. At least, that's what happened around here when they pushed back the start times.
I'm still in work/career mode, and I'm not able to sleep very late. Sleeping past 7 am counts as sleeping in for me. I'm usually up much earlier. I'm a morning person. If I could get my daily habits organized, I'd start working at my computer before 6 am every morning; as it is, I generally get up and do the chores (e.g. cleaning the kitchen) that I was too tired and unmotivated to tackle the evening before. Maybe when the nest empties, it won't be as big a deal.
My hero as a morning person is Frank Loesser, the great Broadway composer. I read somewhere that he composed every morning from 4 am until 8 am. Imagine putting in that much intensive work every day and still having virtually the whole day stretching out before one - I think it sounds wonderful.
Jim, I'm glad you brought up the idiocy of having high schoolers go to school earliest when all the research piling up around us shows teens don't function during their first two or three periods in the usual high school day.
DeleteI can't figure out what goes on down here. We have school buses running, and kids standing at bus stops, all day long. I see some tots out very early. I think I would probably be having cows if I had school-age kids in this town.
The studies about high school kids needing more sleep come up every year along with the discussions of the school bus schedule. The daylight issue and the kids' sleep issue are related here.
DeleteI imagine one reason our school system doesn't change is because of it's sheer size. It is too big to be very flexible and agile. There are 205 schools, with 162,000 students - making it the 14sth largest school system in the country. (I just checked their website!) The students speak 150 different languages. The operating budget this year is $2.5 BILLION. Add another $400 million for capital projects for 2018 and 1/6th of another $1.6 Billion for a 6 year capital improvement plan. They are always building new schools around here because the DC area population just keeps growing.
I don't know much about mid-western systems, but from the mid-westerners I have known here, I have gotten the idea that many people live in "towns" or "townships" and the schools are run by the towns. It is my impression that most of these school systems are pretty small compared to ours.
I grew up in a rural area about 2 hours from Los Angeles, in the mountains. Our school district consisted of one high school and three k-8 elementary schools. Half a century later, it now has another elementary school, which are now k-5, and three middle schools. There are two high schools on the same piece of land (where the high school was located when I was a student). The second one is not really separate though - it's sort of a voc ed school from what I can gather, but it goes under a different name from the main high school. I really need to look that up too and see what the second high school actually does.
When i lived there, I attended the k-8 elementary that was on the same grounds as the high school, so elementary and high school kids had the same buses and the same hours. The other two elementary schools had their own bus routes, separate from the high school route from their areas.
Outside of sleep/dark/twilight issues, our school system starts middle and high schoolers early so that they can get out earlier. Working parents lobbied for this so that older sibs will be available to pick up and care for elementary age family members, who get out later.
ReplyDeleteBuses also run early to accommodate kids who eat breakfast at school. Those who don't eat are sent to the gym or playground to wait for the bell. (The Boy, unbeknownst to us, was having second breakfast at school, unbeknownst to us until the school sent us a hefty bill.)
A "breakfast bus" followed by a later bus was suggested, but rejected as too expensive.
Was a confusing weekend for us. We went out to the western part of the state to visit family there. They are Mountain Standard Time, we are CST. We always gain an hour going out, and lose it coming back. Except this time we didn't.
ReplyDeleteWhoever said farmers don't like the switching back and forth was right. The cattle don't know the time changed. They have their bio rhythms too, and want to be fed at the usual time.
The sun is lower in the sky this time of year. If ypu are on the passenger side of a car going east, it's shining on your face. Of course I shouldn't be complaining about sun as many rainy days as we've had.
Went out in my underwear to pick up the newspaper from the driveway this morning at 6 a.m. Migosh, the whole neighborhood probably saw me in the morning light.
ReplyDelete