Sunday, missing time to cause 23-hour day
March 13, 2010 by Lynn Knell
Filed under BC news, Health, Safety, Travel
It’s time to change the clocks again this weekend – forward, this time – and since we are likely going to lose some snooze, we may be shuffling around in a bit of a daze for the next week or so. This could mean that we are not quite as alert as usual when we get behind the wheel of a vehicle and there are crash stats to prove it. According to averages in a five-year study (2005-2009) done by ICBC, on the Monday following the springtime change, there were 850 crash incidents, compared to 690 incidents the Monday of the week before, a 23% increase.
The time change usually results in our circadian rhythms (our body clocks) being out of whack for a few days. Combine that condition with the longer hours of daylight, the warm temperatures, more early-morning cyclists, joggers and walkers and you could have a recipe for disaster!
ICBC has 5 suggestions to help with the changeover:
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Try to get to bed earlier so you are more rested when you start out Monday morning. In order to get to sleep faster, exercise during the day and a hot bath or shower before getting between the sheets will help. Take a hot milk drink and a book to bed with you.
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Give yourself an extra few minutes to get where you are going on Monday and for the next few days.
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Slow down and keep a safe distance behind the vehicle ahead and watch for pedestrians and cyclists.
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Use your headlights at all times so you are visible to all other road users. Make sure your headlights are clean and that all bulbs are working properly.
- Set a good example by making smart driving decisions. Those smart decisions can have a significant influence on others.
Well here’s my solution. It is way too early for this anyway. At my place spring officially starts when the sun finally clears the hill on the other side of our valley — the last week of February. So here we are just two weeks into spring and suddenly it is summer? I don’t think so…
Anyway, for years now I have just kept my clock the same time all year ’round. In fact, I keep it arbitrarily 3 hours ahead to get myself to bed and up at a decent time… I always think it is getting really late, lol.
So all winter I have been on eastern time, and on Sunday I will ‘switch’ to central time, but actually I will do nothing except let the world change around me.
This is really not that strange. The east side of Kootenay Lake does it — Crawford Bay, Gray Creek, etc. — in their case not to confuse the summer ferry users when they cross the time zone boundary.
Time keeping has become a strange thing at my place anyway, because I keep it on this little LCD clock that has never needed a battery since I got it about 15 years ago. No, it is not solar. It takes a triple-A battery but has never needed a new one. That is a mystery to everyone, including me.