Indiana’s DST
The U.S. Department of Transportation adopted its final rule (pdf) regarding Indiana’s time zone yesterday. The pink shaded areas will observe Central Daylight Savings Time, while the remainder of the state will observe Eastern Daylight Savings Time (click on the map to enlarge it). Blogger Doug Masson, who created the map to the right, has been Indiana’s leading pundit on the issue from the outset and offers a full roundup of links here. He also gives a fuller account of his position here. But in my opinion the finest article on the subject of Daylight Savings Time was penned by In the Agora‘s Zach Wendling in a piece titled, “A Bad Plan for Indiana.” Here’s a portion:
Forcing other people to switch their clocks also has tragic results. The ill effects of sleep deprivation combined with loss of light levels decreases traffic safety. One Canadian study found a 17% increase in traffic accidents the morning after the spring advancement. A trial in the U.S. of year-long DST in 1973 was repealed upon the evidence of increased school bus crashes in the morning. A recent study in the UK found that their DST system causes hundreds of extra traffic fatalities every year, including a 50% increase in pedestrian deaths after the October switch. Are Hoosiers willing to accept these costs?
On the economic front especially, Daniels and other advocates of DST claim that Hoosier businesses lose money every spring because firms outside the State can never tell what time it is here. We would benefit from being synchronized with either Chicago or New York they say, and thankfully the debate over which one has so far stalled our switch (even Daniels hasn’t made up his mind). But if synchronization were so important, why isn’t the entire world synchronized? As Daniels himself likes to point out, we live in the age of globalization, yet every country has a unique daylight saving scheme – or none at all. Somehow, global commerce survives. Hoosier businesses can as well. And let’s not forget that changing the clocks twice a year carries significant costs as well – to both individuals and corporations.
