My complaint with DST isn't so much about when we have to get up, but about what it does to commuting with respect to sun position.
For anyone who lives to the west of their job - and that seems to be a lot of people - and has relatively normal office hours, you're going to go through a time period in the spring and fall where the sun is in drivers' eyes as they're commuting. In the morning, just after the sun rises, it will be blinding drivers going east, and in the evening, before sunset, it'll blind drivers going west. Given the geography, there's not much to be done about that. If we just wait a couple weeks (for any given person), the times will progress enough so that they'll no longer be affected.
But when you throw DST into the equation, it resets progression of sunrise and sunset times. After we've made it through those couple weeks where the sun is in your eyes, suddenly the time change hits, pushing the time back into your commuting drive again.
Thus, the number of days I need to spend in dangerous driving conditions, with myself and other drivers partially blinded by the rising or setting son, is more-or-less doubled by DST. It seems to me to be a significant safety issue.
I highly recommend wearing sunglasses while driving. This does not eliminate the sun issue, but it helps not just deal with the sun but also those few seconds of temporary blindness when you get reflections.
That said, the most useful thing I found was to change my commute around glare issues.
DST or not, good polarized sunglasses are a great idea. It helps not just for the direct sun in your eyes, but also glare reflecting off other cars, pavement, etc. Don't go spending $100+ dollars on it, you can get something good for under $30.
For anyone who lives to the west of their job - and that seems to be a lot of people - and has relatively normal office hours, you're going to go through a time period in the spring and fall where the sun is in drivers' eyes as they're commuting. In the morning, just after the sun rises, it will be blinding drivers going east, and in the evening, before sunset, it'll blind drivers going west. Given the geography, there's not much to be done about that. If we just wait a couple weeks (for any given person), the times will progress enough so that they'll no longer be affected.
But when you throw DST into the equation, it resets progression of sunrise and sunset times. After we've made it through those couple weeks where the sun is in your eyes, suddenly the time change hits, pushing the time back into your commuting drive again.
Thus, the number of days I need to spend in dangerous driving conditions, with myself and other drivers partially blinded by the rising or setting son, is more-or-less doubled by DST. It seems to me to be a significant safety issue.