Early Results: Perspectives on Daylight Savings Time

As some of you are aware, the Utah Legislature is presently investigating whether or not to put an end to daylight savings time, the setting of clocks forward in the spring so that the sun rises and sets at a hour of the day during the spring, summer, and fall months. I am a fan of the later sun rise and set relative to the local-time clock, but others out there may feel differently.

The Utah Governor's Office of Economic Development is currently conducting an online survey on views on daylight savings time that can be completed at http://business.utah.gov/time by both Utah residents and non-residents (yes, the latter is important as we have a big tourism economy).  You can vote and add comments until August 15th.  I wonder if that means August 15 defined using UTC, MDT, or MST?

Results and comments through yesterday morning are now available on the GOED website and they show that the daylight time lovers are currently getting slaughtered.  With over 26,000 responses, a whopping 67% of the respondents wish to align with Arizona and stay on standard time all year.  Only 15% want to maintain current practice.  18% say stay on daylight savings time all year.

Source: http://business.utah.gov/time

Of course, this is a voluntary survey, which tends to invoke response from those with the strongest opinions.  It would be interesting to see what the results would be of a random sample of Utah residents and non-residents.  Ultimately, the decision to could be put up for a vote, and that might be even more interesting.

For your entertainment purposes, more than 13,000 specific comments are available here.  Here are a few I've self selected just for fun.  I especially like the third and fourth.

"Changing time by legislation is so silly to me. Time should never change, it's a cosmic reality, not a law of men. Fooling ourselves about the real time of day is a bit insane." 

"Daylight Savings is silly for a country which calls itself free. If you want to get up an hour earlier for an hour more of sunlight, then do it; it is your prerogative. But it is a form of totalitarianism to force everyone to get up an hour earlier." 

"If DST was a face, I would punch it as hard as I could." 

"I have not changed my clocks in 4 years. I have hated daylight savings for years. What is the point. "

One thing is apparent from reading the comments, everyone hates the change twice a year.  At least we an agree on something!