Actually the impact on nations higher in latitude makes the time change more compelling.
The biggest issue is traffic accidents as a result of commuting directly into the rising or setting sun. It's especially acute if there are children crossing streets to get to school at the same time. It doesn't take many dead kids to make headlines.
If I remember correctly, Chile abolished DST, and then after they have a ton of traffic fatalities, they added it back two years later.
It's not as clear cut as people make it out to be.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11152980METHODS:
Data from 21 years of United States' fatal automobile accidents were gathered. The mean number of accidents on the days at the time of the shifts (Saturday, Sunday and Monday) was compared to the average of the corresponding mean number of accidents on the matching day of the weeks preceding and following the shift. This was repeated for each DST shift. The number of accidents for a particular shift was also correlated with the year of the accidents.
RESULTS:
There was a significant increase in accidents for the Monday immediately following the spring shift to DST (t=1.92, P=0.034). There was also a significant increase in number of accidents on the Sunday of the fall shift from DST (P<0.002). No significant changes were observed for the other days. A significant negative correlation with the year was found between the number of accidents on the Saturdays and Sundays but not Mondays.
I don't buy this. Sunset/sunrise times change year round. If you shift the time by one hour you are still going to have a few weeks where the sun is in your eyes in the morning or evening, it'll just shift when that happens by some number of days
I found that the change in timezone actually caused me to be commuting into the sun twice as often. I'd go through a period of commuting into the sun, and then the sun would start rising later, and then the timezone changed and I'd be commuting into the sun again.
Saskatchawan has some of the northernmost respectably-sized cities in Canada, and they also have lots of rural farming which means endless long winter drives on snow-blown roads.
And Saskatchewan is also FLAT. So sunrise/set times line up with the astronomy. Your horizon is a horizon. I'm in BC. Whether I can see the sun in winter has far more to do with mountains than earth's orbit.
The biggest issue is traffic accidents as a result of commuting directly into the rising or setting sun. It's especially acute if there are children crossing streets to get to school at the same time. It doesn't take many dead kids to make headlines.
If I remember correctly, Chile abolished DST, and then after they have a ton of traffic fatalities, they added it back two years later.
It's not as clear cut as people make it out to be.