Here we are, the dark days of winter, the joy and celebration of the Christmas holidays behind us. Now we cling to the hope that a rodent will tell us when spring is coming, but even that is a few weeks away.
Why is it so depressing? Well, the Christmas credit card bill is showing up, so that doesn’t help, but mainly it’s because it’s dark. Any light available is during work or school hours. Toss in some rain – or heaven forbid, snow – and it makes things seem even more bleak.
It would make sense to maximize the amount of sunlight we get, wouldn’t it? Isn’t that why it’s called Daylight Savings?
The big complaint is people are a bit fatigued when the time changes. There are more accidents on the Monday after the clocks spring forward. If we eliminate the time change, the assumption is we’d eliminate that problem, but there’s no consideration for new problems that might arise, is there?
If we stick with daylight savings, between November and March the time remains one hour later, so darker longer in the morning, lighter in the evening.
But think about it around this time of year. This morning, the sun wouldn’t rise until 9:05 a.m. In fact, between Dec. 14 and Jan. 11, the sun won’t rise until after 9 a.m. Between Nov. 20 and Feb. 10, the earliest we’d see the sun is 8:30 a.m.
So how do darker mornings affect us? Kids are walking to school in the dark. Agreed, there’s a bit of twilight, but on cloudy days, not so much, so are we going to trade a few traffic accidents for a potential increase in childhood pedestrian accidents? Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me.
Stay on standard time - that’s the solution! Sure, if you are an early riser. Between May 27 and July 7, the sun will be up by 4:15 a.m….so will your dog. Between April 25 and Aug 13, it will be up before 5 a.m. I’m sometimes on the road at 5 a.m. at there are not that many people around.
What a waste of daylight.
Brad Sherwin, MBA is a long-time resident of South Delta, and has more than 30 years experience in marketing, public relations, and business strategy. He teaches post-secondary marketing, coaches hockey goalies and is past-president of Deltassist.
