Why are dark evenings dangerous, but dark mornings "safe"?

[Tourist Tony]

There is a mixture of reasons that people have pushed for CET in the UK, and one of them is down to EUrophiles, who seem to miss the point that "Europe" (they mean the EU) is in several time zones.
Almost all of the UK lies to the west of the Greenwich Meridian, so it is already unnaturally early by GMT. France is only on CET because the Germans put them on it, rather than the rather odd number of minutes ahead of GMT the French insisted on after their hissy fit when Greenwich was selected over Paris.
15 degrees of latitude is an hour of (natural) time difference. Look on a map and see where that is. The Portuguese tried out CET, and went back to GMT because it fitted their day better--no surprises there.
The safety arguments fail on one simple point: frost. Many, many times I had to be late to work on winter mornings in East Kent because the frost made riding too dangerous. Add a change to the clocks....

[bikenerd]

This. I love the lighter evenings, cycling home without lights.

Me too.  Being able to cycle home from work without lights and then go for a "night" ride in the woods without using lights, or only having to use them towards the end is fantastic.

Indeed.  But those people who have to commute in for silly o'clock starts now have to put up with dark morning commutes with dopey motorists just so that you can have your fun.

Sounds like a fair compromise to me 

[Diver300]

15 degrees of latitude is an hour of (natural) time difference.

Ahem.
Longitude.

[Zipperhead]

A few years ago, during this debate, I heard a farmer complaining that it upset his cows because (to them) they went from being milked at 5am to being milked at 4am... Quite how he failed to grasp the next logical step is beyond me! 

Which is?

If you are going to say 'milk them at 6am', remember that the milk tanker will be arriving an hour earlier.

I know nothing about livestock or farming, but presumably if the farmers got together and said "the cows want a lie in" the tanker could leave an hour later without a disaster occurring?
Do cows get up with the sunrise?

I missed MC's post - sorry! Aye, I hadn't considered the tanker schedule, but there are easy ways around that. PD's solution is one; another would be to start milking 5 minutes earlier each day, starting 12 days before the clocks change... The point being that nobody has to change their schedule by a hour overnight.

My BiL who is a dairy farmer moves the milking times back by 15 minutes a week. Tanker timing isn't a problem as he now has a large tank which is emptied every few days rather than daily.

[Adrian]

It seems to me that the mistake is in teaching the cows how to read the time.

[Euan Uzami]

Scotland are apparently whinging that it will make it dangerous for children on their way to school. Well why don't they just have the school starting time  at 10am instead of 9am?

[hellymedic]

It's completely dark by 4pm GMT in Scotland in winter. It's not even properly light at 9am GMT. SAD in a can!

[David Martin]

As has been pointed out, most of Scotland is over 15 mins later than London in terms of time anyway. Pushing clocks even further forward by an hour is a silly idea - at the start of summer time it would be still dark when children are leaving for school.

OK, so we benefit from longer evenings - big deal when the sun doesn't set till over an hour after London at midsummer anyway.

..d

[Tourist Tony]

15 degrees of latitude is an hour of (natural) time difference.

Ahem.
Longitude.

Oops.......

[clarion]

I think we can afford you a degree of latitude in the circumstances

[Nuncio]

I've waited long enough I think.  I'd just like to point out, as is my wont twice a year, that Belgian energy saving time is best.

[clarion]

If we didn't have BST, how would the sootbike commuters know when it's safe to get their bicycles out?

[PaulF]

I've waited long enough I think.  I'd just like to point out, as is my wont twice a year, that Belgian energy saving time is best.

How does that work?

[Cudzoziemiec]

Don't get me started on this  

Twice a year this discussion crops up.  

It doesn't matter what your clock says, THERE ARE NO MORE HOURS OF DAYLIGHT IN THE DAY IF YOU CHANGE THE TIME DISPLAYED.


If you want to enjoy more of the daylight, get up earlier.  

Now let's just stop farting around changing the clocks twice a year.  Thank you.

+n. Changing sleep and waking cycles is actually more disturbing to your body than most people realise. It's not just a question of safety (on the road or elsewhere). It's particularly disturbing to children's sleep patterns, affecting their behaviour, schooling, and so on.

[David Martin]

Just leave it on GMT then. If you want more daylight or to integrate with Europe, get up earlier.

..d

[Nuncio]

I've waited long enough I think.  I'd just like to point out, as is my wont twice a year, that Belgian energy saving time is best.

How does that work?

I should have said: "Belgian Energy Saving Time is 'BEST'".  An observation, not a value judgement.  Sorry.

[nuttycyclist]

Just leave it on GMT then. If you want more daylight or to integrate with Europe, get up earlier.

..d

+n

[border-rider]

Just leave it on GMT then. If you want more daylight or to integrate with Europe, get up earlier.

..d

And change your job.  And convince all the other people with whom you interact to do the same.

Simple, really.

 

[hellymedic]

I've waited long enough I think.  I'd just like to point out, as is my wont twice a year, that Belgian energy saving time is best.

How does that work?

Isn't Belgium, like much of the EU, on European time, an hour ahead of us all the time? (Except that they change their clocks an hour befor we do.)

[spesh]

Just leave it on GMT then. If you want more daylight or to integrate with Europe, get up earlier.

..d

And change your job.  And convince all the other people with whom you interact to do the same.

Simple, really.

 

+1

Just to put things in perspective, I'm working a shift pattern that has me doing four days of 7am-7pm, four days off, four nights of 7pm-7am, four days off, repeat ad infinitum et nauseum...

Cranking my body clock backwards and forwards as much as I have to do with that frequency has left it completely FUBAR... sometimes I forget what day of the week it is. And when I'm off shift, I tend to struggle to get to sleep until 2am, and sleep in until 11am plus or minus an hour...

Compared to what my shift pattern puts me through, the GMT/BST switch is neither here nor there.  

And it might be interesting to look at a map of the world's time zones, and compare the local time in some countries with the nominal time zone by longtitude. Some parts of China for example, are three hours out of sync with when they ought to be.

[rower40]

Move the clock forward by one hour each Spring, for the next 24 years.  Don't move it back in the Autumn.  Then we'll have tried out every time zone, and can have a vote as to which one is best.  And we'll have an extra day to go out cycling.

[nuttycyclist]

Just leave it on GMT then. If you want more daylight or to integrate with Europe, get up earlier.

..d

And change your job.  And convince all the other people with whom you interact to do the same.

Simple, really.

 

I'm in a 9-5 office job.

I got fed up with the rush hour traffic and also the fact that everything goes wrong in the afternoon so I don't get out at 5pm.

I now tend to do a 10-6 day.  It hasn't caused a problem.

[border-rider]

I can work whatever hours I fancy.  That's not a universal for everyone, though, and I still have to turn up to audaxs, club runs etc at the same time as everyone else.

[nuttycyclist]

I can work whatever hours I fancy.  That's not a universal for everyone, though, and I still have to turn up to audaxs, club runs etc at the same time as everyone else.

BST, GMT or other? 

I use "Nutty time" on my watch, 5 minutes fast so that I am supposedly "on time" 5 minutes ahead of everybody else... but in reality I know about this so turn up 5 minutes "late" for everything.

[Cudzoziemiec]

And it might be interesting to look at a map of the world's time zones, and compare the local time in some countries with the nominal time zone by longtitude. Some parts of China for example, are three hours out of sync with when they ought to be.

I remember seeing an old map of Europe's time zones. I can't remember quite how old, I think it was from the immediate post-war period. There wasn't yet one continent-wide accepted time zone, which lead to some interesting anomalies. France was one hour ahead of GMT, but the Netherlands - which should be slightly "faster" as they're a little further east - was only 40 mins ahead of GMT.

I've heard it argued that Poland should actually be in the next time zone east, i.e. GMT+2 along with Ukraine and the Baltic States, rather than GMT+1 along with Germany. Empirically it seemed to make sense to me, thinking of the dark winter mornings. But then I looked at a map. Longitude 15 East actually coincides more or less with the German-Polish border.