518 – The benefits of Daylight Saving Time

THERE’S an hour more in bed over this weekend. A cause for celebration?

Well, certainly my teenage daughter will welcome the fact. But not me.

I really find the ending of British Summer Time – putting the clocks back an hour – terribly depressing. It’s the knowledge that you’ll be sitting in the office at 4pm; and it will be dark, or getting dark outside.

I also tend to think people are more alert in the morning rather than later in the day after a hard and stressful day at work. You know the thing. Picture this: a November afternoon, 5pm. It’s raining, it’s dark, the drive home is difficult, headlights are refracted through the windscreen. It’s an unappealing time to drive.

It’s also a more dangerous time to drive.

There’s a spike in accidents at this time of year, precipitated by the dangerous cocktail of early afternoon lack of visibility, deteriorating weather conditions and lack of driver preparation for the changed conditions.

So, along with TRL (Transport Research Laboratory) I really do welcome the Daylight Saving Bill which is due for its second reading in the House of Commons in December. (In other words put our clocks forward an hour – the same time as Central European Time.)

The Bill requires a cross-departmental analysis of the potential costs and benefits of advancing time by one hour for all or part of the year, and for action to be taken in light of that analysis.