Should We Shed Daylight Savings Time?

March 28, 2014 - PRLog -- It started with American politician and inventor Benjamin Franklin wanting to reduce the money people spent on candles in 1784 and quickly became the bane of our existence.

So why not switch to a singular time? Russia banned Daylight Savings Time (DST) in 2011 and many other countries such as China, India, and Japan don't have DST, it is used in at least 70 countries worldwide. While we all enjoy the extra hour of sleep in the evenings, there are benefits to having more light in our days. Those include the following:

·         Official Parliamentary reports state that there are net reductions in road deaths due to Daylight Savings time in 3 percent in England and 8.6 in Scotland.

·         Cambridge University research suggests that lighter evenings would cut 450,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions from UK power stations and reduce peak demand for electricity by up to 4.3%

·         There is a 3% estimated drop in crime with an extra hour of light.

·         Tourism in the UK boosts by 1 billion pounds.

·         When the UK moved to singular British Standard Time in 1968-1971, there was an 11.7% reduction in road casualties.

·         The NHS saved 138 million due to the above reduction in casualties.

(Research and Image Provided by Tempur (http://uk.tempur.com/daylight-savings-and-british-summer-...)).

So, should we switch to a singular time?