Heart Attacks, Car Crashes, And Bad Sleep: 4 Arguments For And Against BST

On Sunday, March 29, the clocks are set to go forward in the UK. 

It’s been that way since 1916, though we’ve experimented with sticking to “British Summer Time” (BST) for the whole year and following “double summer time” since. 

Some experts, though, say we should stop making people’s clocks jump fprward an hour in spring. For instance, the European Parliament has backed a proposal to get rid of daylight saving time (DST).

Here are some of the arguments for and against BST, sometimes also called “DST”:

Against: more heart attacks may happen right after BST

One study found that heart attacks rise by 24% the first working day after BST or DST (in the UK, BST always starts on the last Sunday of March). 

Yet another paper noted an 8% increase in ischemic stroke in the two days following the clock change. 

And a New York paper found that hospital admissions for atrial fibrillation rise in the Monday to Thursday following DST, but not during the clock change in autumn.

For: it’s linked to lower car accidents

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents have called for the UK government to adopt BST year-round. 

The charity previously told parliament, “more people are killed and injured on the road because of darker evenings in autumn and winter than would be if we adopted British Summer Time all year round... In 2017, the number of pedestrian deaths rose from 37 in September to 46 in October, 63 in November, and 50 in December”.

A University of Surrey paper found that car acccident go down by about 15-20% in the days leading up to BST, as drivers have more light in the evenings. And when we leave BST in winter, accidents rise by 13%.

Against: it wreaks havoc on your sleep

You lose an hour of sleep during BST, and your body doesn’t really care that the clock says seven o’clock; that first day you wake up, it’ll feel like rising at six.

Some sleep experts from the British Sleep Society have called for both BST and the winter clock changes to be abolished, because they mess with our body clock so much. 

These disruptions to our sleep lead to a dip in “performance, productivity and safety for both paediatric and adult populations,” the researchers added. 

Unsure: some say BST makes us more money, others say it doesn’t

Some people want us to adopt BST year-round because they say it’ll keep our working hours close to those in many EU countries and save us money on heating and lighting later on in the year. Others say those on the continent don’t actually have uniform working hours, and the energy savings are contested. 

Even more confusingly, others, like Lib Dem MP Alex Meyer, have called to “double summer time” or “Churchill time,” which we followed in WWII. This meant the clocks sprang forward two hours in spring, and stayed at what is now BST in winter.  

This was done to increase productivity in daylight and save electricity costs, Meyer called this “a low-cost, high-impact proposal” to “help meet climate goals, reduce energy bills, and boost our High Streets by making better use of the daylight hours we already have”. 

But some research suggests that the energy we save by having brighter evenings is more than offset by “increased energy consumption in the warmer lighter evenings”.