Lesley Riddoch: High time for a rethink on daylight saving hours

Published on Monday 31 October 2011 00:00

A previous trial found darker mornings and lighter evenings actually saved lives, so why are we so quick to dismiss the idea

WELCOME to winter. The days are shorter, the geese have arrived, leaves are turning and seasonal change is clearly under way.

But does today really feel like the first day of winter? There’s no early snow. In fact London is basking in 18 degrees of sunshine.

Nonetheless, this weekend the clocks went back as part of a bizarre annual ritual in which light-craving Britons shut the sun out of their spare time and afternoon lives. Thanks to this unfathomable act of collective masochism, it will indeed feel like winter tonight because the end of the working day will (roughly) coincide with the end of available daylight – seven weeks ahead of the winter solstice. Not as mad as March though, when it’s dark at 5pm but light at a sleep-destroying 5am. All that early evening gloom in the name of what – child safety?

It’s worth restating the actual findings of the 1968-71 experiment. Three years of darker mornings and lighter evenings saved an estimated 2,700 lives. Slightly more kids were injured during the darker mornings, but far, far fewer were killed during the lighter afternoons – a time of day when more drivers are tired and accident prone and kids dawdle home from school. The net result was a saving in lives which no-one has subsequently questioned.

But only the slight rise in morning fatalities got publicity. So the preoccupation with dangerous dark mornings endured – resulting in last week’s knee-jerk rejection of the latest clock change proposals by every Scottish party leader.

Since the current Lighter Later Bill is proposed by a plummy-sounding English (Class Enemy) Tory, supported by David (Cuts) Cameron and puts Britain on Central European (Big Bailout) Time, the autopilot switched on almost unbidden.

If politics is the art of the possible, it may be practically impossible for Alex Salmond to pick his way across that field of political tripwires to support a change that hardly seems to matter to anyone.

So the Scottish Government’s message to David Cameron and the citizens of the UK has been as predictable as it is disappointing. “No common sense please – we’re Scottish.”

Does no-one care about the threat to children posed by dark killer evenings north of the Border?

The charity Royal Society for the Prevention of Accicdents (ROSPA) does. According to the normally mild-mannered safety people: “Since the 1968-71 experiment, 5,000 people have died and more than 30,000 received serious (road) injuries for no reasons other than entrenched prejudice and lack of political will.”

The National Farmers Union of Scotland has bravely supported the notion of another trial – reserving the right to turn the clocks back (literally) if the promised safety improvements don’t happen.

An opinion poll suggests a majority of Scots support that position, too.

And conservationists also back change – a closer fit between natural daylight and working hours will create greater energy savings than taking 200,000 cars off the road every year.

For once, the SNP are behind the curve of civic opinion.

Why? Perhaps Alex Salmond and Scottish Secretary Michael Moore think the safety advantages revealed by the trial in the 1960s are confined only to the south of England. The only person to have thoroughly analysed the research findings is Dr Mayer Hillman, a veteran advocate of clock change. He says proportionately more Scots lives were saved during the years of lighter afternoons and darker mornings.

But as critics point out, he would say that wouldn’t he? Critics of change have relied on an (understandable) emotional aversion to morning darkness rather than a different analysis of the facts. Indeed, arch-sceptic Angus Brendan MacNeil MP partly concedes the argument with his proposal to cut the duration of the clock shift to six weeks either side of midwinter instead of the current endless 21 weeks.

The evidence lies completely ignored – and is now 40 years old That’s why Rebecca Harris’s bill is calling for a new trial.

A rerun of the 1968-71 experiment may actually put a big hole in the case for permanent clock change. Since 1968, drink driving has been made illegal and lunchtime drinking is now rare so roads and evenings may be relatively safer without clock change. Since the 1960s, however, we have become fatter and more sedentary. Modern kids are threatened just as much by the long-term effects of obesity and physical inactivity as the ill-effects of careless winter drivers. Would extra time after school encourage Scots to get out more – or just to watch more TV?

So why not conduct another daylight saving trial to find out?

Perhaps there should be a slow shift of the UK away from a self image based on tradition (however unfair) and tiny distinguishing characteristics like driving on the left. Indeed, this may be our fundamental problem with the EU, whose original brief was to standardise measurements.

We stayed out of a disastrous euro. We kept our pounds and ounces, feet and yards, three-pin plugs, right-hand drive and our position of splendid isolation, sailing into each new day an hour ahead of mainland Europe. Ergo we are British – different from “them”.

Does our idea of ourselves still rely on evidence-defying, daylight-defeating habits?

I’ll bet the Irish feel more Irish today with a well-read, fabulously idiosyncratic poet like Michael D Higgins at the presidential helm than they ever did having empty arguments with the British about accepting English banknotes.

Cultural identity should be about bigger things.

If it makes us safer, happier, more energy efficient and more outgoing to have an extra afternoon hour from November to March why is Scotland resisting the case for clock change?

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andrewrushworth

Friday, November 4, 2011 at 11:14 AM

How right Lesley Riddoch is. The accident statistics say it all. The most ridiculous aspect is that we have to wait until the end of March before we can put the clocks forward again. A possible political compromise would be to advance the Spring date to something like the middle of February, and perhaps put the autumn date back a bit too. It may not be generally known, but the latest sunrise takes place around 31 December (earliet sunset around 12 December) so if the main concern is about dark mornings, mid-November to mid-February would seem about right.

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samcoldstream

Monday, October 31, 2011 at 05:07 PM

BOTH sides of this argument are digging up some very dubious statistics in an attempt to prove they are correct, and the other side is wrong? A scientist interviewed on Sky News put it in a nutshell: Any change between the date the clocks go back (30th October) and the Winter Solstice(22nd December) would only save one hour of daylight which is thereafter returned by 25th March next year A farmer from Devon stated on BBC that during the last 3 year experiment, despite the darker mornings and lighter afternoons, his father and and hundreds of other farmers in the county still milked their dairy herds as before. Cows don't keep time.

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swordale

Monday, October 31, 2011 at 05:04 PM

Every time the subject of moving to Central European Time is raised I'm annoyed that it is always Scotland that opposes the idea. As the ScotlandEngland border runs south west - north east there is a corner of England that lies further north than parts of Scotland eg compare Berwick with Stranraer. Yet the argument is often characterised as a Scotland v England debate, perhaps conveniently so for those politicians who hijack the subject to beat their own drums. Just why we have to go through this depressing ritual of changing the clocks is baffling. Would it not be better to be permanently on BST? One further thought: why is it that we put the clocks back aproximately seven weeks before the winter solstice yet wait over three months before reverting to BST?

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Hugh V McLachlan Elderslie

Monday, October 31, 2011 at 01:02 PM

#3Broon Bairn 'Like many scribes, Ms Riddoch relies on a notion of "British" that's fast becoming obsolete. Scotland is no longer in thrall to Westminster , or is obliged to follow its lead meekly' If Scotland were independent and England opted for the proposed change, I suspect that Scotland would feel pressurised into following suit. Similarly, if Scotland were independent and used sterling, I suspect that it would be under the sway of the Bank of England. Ironically, as part of the UK, Scotland has more control of its own destiny in some respects than it would have as a buffetted 'independent' state.

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Ewan Macintyre

Monday, October 31, 2011 at 12:12 PM

I remember the experiment over forty years ago. Lesley's first sentence puts it in a nutshell: 'A previous trial found darker mornings and lighter evenings actually saved lives, so why are we so quick to dismiss the idea?' Shame on all the Scottish party leaders and the SNP's Angus B. MacNeil.

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Soixante-neuf

Monday, October 31, 2011 at 12:04 PM

I was a kid when this was tried last time, and I'll never forget it. I don't mind leaving the house when there are streaks of grey dawn in the sky. I absolutely hate it when the sky is still black and the stars are twinkling. It didn't make any difference to the evenings. It was still dark before I got home. It just meant that I never saw my house in the daylight except at weekends. If the clocks stay forward, the morning journeys will be made in the pre-dawn dark and cold, before the snow and ice have been cleared or gritting done. OK, the snow clearing teams will just have to get on with it, but the earlier they have to start, the harder it is. Far better to let the pavement clearing and so on have a chance of working, by leaving everything an hour later. Going home in the dark isn't so bad. The warmth of the day is still in the air, the roads and pavements are clear, and you're going home for your tea. I'd far rather do that (and indeed I'll be doing it anyway no matter when the clocks are set), than leave the house while the moon and the stars are still crisp and clear.

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Hugh V McLachlan Elderslie

Monday, October 31, 2011 at 10:11 AM

I am not in favour of referendums in general. However, if we are to have them, a referendum in the UK over this matter might be a reasonable idea. Scottish votes should count no more than English votes on this matter. I would vote for the proposed change. The interests of, for instance farmers in Thurso or Shetland mean no more but no less to me than, say, those of office workers in Manchester or London.

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Broon Bairn

Monday, October 31, 2011 at 09:57 AM

Like many scribes, Ms Riddoch relies on a notion of "British" that's fast becoming obsolete. Scotland is no longer in thrall to Westminster , or is obliged to follow its lead meekly, to the same degree as in the grand old days of Empire, home and beauty, when the map in every classroom was stained red (in more senses than one!)

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WJohn

Monday, October 31, 2011 at 08:35 AM

The obvious corollary to this is that more people (proportionally) in northern Scotland than in Southern Scotland (or Britain, article is not clear) lose their lives in winter, and in the northern Isles very few die in summer. The obvious solution is to have the time change continually so that sunset occurs at the same hour each day. Or if you really believe that ending the school day in darkness is dangerous then finish the school day in daylight. Tinkering about with an hour change two times a year only solves the dark evening problem for a week or so. Then we are back into the scary dark afternoons again. Anybody who wants schools to operate into the dark late afternoons is being careless with children’s lives. And to do so knowingly is criminal. Maybe the long school holiday should be in the dark winter months with schools operating longer hours during the long summer days. You know it makes sense.

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1

Bradged

Monday, October 31, 2011 at 08:19 AM

What an eminently sensible argument. I have never understood why so many of us are against this proposal. For so long as 100 of us are alive we shall on no account recognise a good argument if it comes from the English? There is some sound common sense to suggest it would be a good move. The data that's available comes from 40 years ago, and as Lesley Riddoch points out, many surround factors have changed. So let's put the thing beyond doubt and make the change for 3 years, with some properly designed research around the questions we'd be interesting in knowing the answers to (traffic volumes, deaths and injuries, economic impact, impact between rural and urban etc etc).

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