Can we get rid of daylight savings time?

We did the "fall back" portion of daylight savings time last weekend. So on Sunday 2 am became 1 am and we got an extra hour of sleep.

And then we had traffic chaos while people tried to deal with reseting their internal clocks to match the new time.

And then people came to appointments an hour earlier than they should have because they didn't know it was the time change weekend, and had to waste an hour of their lives waiting.

And then we found out just how early the sun went down when it was 5 pm and all of a sudden it was dark outside.

In Canada we've changed the dates when this infernal daylight savings "fall forwards" and "spring ahead" will happen. We "fall" later and will "spring" earlier. This is because the 'mericans have changed when they reset their clocks, and we all know they will never understand what time it is in Canada (if any of them really care) if we don't change with them. It's the younger sibling being bullied syndrome.

But I was so enjoying having the days get slowly shorter! It was an easy transition into winter that way - almost a natural change that the body could handle. Working with the planet instead of fighting to control the ultimately uncontrollable.

The spring shift is always the more chaotic of the two changes. From traffic chaos to more heart attacks, springing ahead is worse than falling back. See this article for more from a Swedish study on that subject: Norwich Bulletin Article

Theoretically, daylight savings time is supposed to save energy costs, but most studies find this is really not the case. See this newspaper article: Star Tribune Article

I think we should get rid of the idea entirely and skip the spring time shift and the fall time shift. Our health is at risk. The entire country's health is at risk - except for Saskatchewan, where they are smart enough not to bother doing the time shift. We need to learn from Saskatchewan - not something people often say, but it's true.