For years we try to act like professionals in this volunteer capacity and yet every time we encounter a time change for Daylight Savings time, it’s handled poorly and our rides are messed up for a few days. We even tried to get ahead of the curve by sending the Events staff a ticket with what Herd rides are US/North American based and what rides are European based. Our emails have gone ignored.
An hour doesn’t seem like a big deal to some, but now we have ride leaders and sweepers unable to commit to the ride when it will cause them to be late for work, stay up too late, or miss scheduled time with their families. Also, the impact it has on the thousands of riders who enjoy participating in the same ride every week and also schedule their time around it, but not can’t make it when it’s an hour off.
As a community group organizer, I find this repeated issue to be unacceptable and highly unprofessional.
This seems like a concern that is beyond Zwift’s power to address.
There are movements in some places to eliminate DST, maybe there is something that can help there (sorry I am not aware of any specifics)
I am aware that the world doesn’t exactly change on the same dates. With a list of what rides should change and which shouldn’t, this should simply be another data field for each ride on the schedule. Shoot, at this rate, they can make it another item we’re responsible for ourselves via the Clubs Event Edit function. At least we’d feel we’d have some control and responsibility for it rather than emails that only receive the generic auto reply. As a courtesy, I’ve included the dates of the US time changes through 2024 (in case anyone thought this information was a secret!)
Agreed. A bonus concern is that around these times nobody really knows when the event will actually take place until afterwards, as the times are sometimes corrected at the last minute.
This could be used as an automatic reply on this forum.
The issue isn’t DST per se but rather the way event times are specified on the platform, that there is no way to specify a “home” timezone (with associated DST behaviour) for the event. Of course, without DST this would not be a problem, and the European Parliament has actually already voted to abolish DST in the EU, but implementation has been delayed indefinitely because of covid.
Whereas the US is contemplating the opposite, getting rid of Standard Time:
The Sunshine Protection Act, proposed by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), along with four Republican and three Democratic senators, says we should ditch standard time since we only use it four months of the year, from November to March. “The call to end the antiquated practice of clock changing is gaining momentum throughout the nation,” Rubio said in a statement. Source Article
Not that I think this will gain much traction it would be nice to get rid of the silly concept of moving clocks forward and backward every year.
Well, strictly speaking EU isn’t abolishing DST, just the back-and-forth, it’s still up to the member states to decide which time zone they want to be in.
Year-round DST was introduced by Stalin already back in 1930 (“decree time”) so nothing new there…
This PITA issue raises its ugly head again, with 57 countries/territories ‘moving their clocks back’ at various hours this weekend. See: Upcoming Daylight Saving Time Clock Changes
From Zwift’s upcoming events calendar, I’m guessing that Zwift event times are tied to California’s’ time zone, which will move from PDT to PST on 7 November, so for the coming week, regular ride times for most people outside of the US will be one hour earlier than usual.
I know that there is nothing that Zwift can actually do to make this simpler for everyone. It’s the fault of a longstanding geopolitical mess where:
i) The majority of countries move clocks forward and then back each year based on some now-questionable reasoning, and
ii) Different countries make the changes at different times, meaning that the relationships between time zones don’t remain constant.
What Zwift could do would be to post ephemeral (i.e. click to cancel) banners on the site and companion app before the important periods for these changes – not just twice a year, since places like Australia make their changes weeks earlier – to helpfully warn people that their ride start times “could be affected by international clock changes in the coming days”. I’m confident that some time zone-related logic in the code could allow the messages to appear to only those who might reasonably be affected by the changes.
What we as citizens can do is to lobby our deciders to put a proper end to the whole back and forth thing once and for all. One can but dream.
I have to say I don’t see the problem. Zwift has reliably told me what time events are on, in my preferred time zone, even directly after a clock change. What exactly is going wrong for you?
You’re right, @_JamesA_ZSUNR: the upcoming ride times are correct on my devices, so Zwift is blameless in that respect. (Many other systems do mess up on that point due to poor coding for time changes, but it gets better every year. A few years back, Apple itself futzed the automatic clock change calculation in iOS and thousands of people’s morning alarms went off an hour late. )
I added to this older thread yesterday, which started out in a slightly different direction, rather than start a new one, so I don’t agree with everything said in the OP.
And maybe I’m being a busybody (a fair accusation), but I’m thinking more of the people outside of the US who have been on Zwift for less than six months who could be tripped up this week. They’ll be used to doing a weekly ride at, say, 19:00 at their local time. They’ll be getting ready as usual tomorrow, will get on to warm up, and discover that it started an hour earlier and that they’ve missed it.
Sure, if people are very aware of different clock changes occurring at different times and if people plan ahead in Zwift/Companion, they will be prepared. You sound like someone who plans ahead and is very organised, but just looking at the signed up numbers for group rides, we know that many people often only only tick the box just before start time, including regulars.
Also, as mentioned in the OP, there will be people who physically won’t be able to join their regular 19:00 ride, even if prepared, simply because they can’t be on their bikes for 18:00 due to work, etc. (Yeah, I know, first world problems and all that.)
Just trying to raise awareness about the impact on the changes for people.
Guess it might be that when viewing events on the other side of a DST change point, one of the applications shows events at your current UTC offset (so one hour too late/early), the other at the correct UTC offset at the time of the event.
I am new to Zwift and live in the UK so I’m glad I read your post. I’ve built a workout routine around the daily events so was surprised when they were suddenly scheduled 1 hour early. I agree that a little popup on the app would be very useful.
Cheers, Dan. Glad it might have helped.
Interestingly, not all regular rides appear time-shifted this week, which means that the ride leaders do have some freedom to alter when their rides take place. Many non-US leaders seem to be based in the GMT/CET time zones and it’s understandable that they would like to keep their schedules regular, too.
From what I’ve understood, most clubs use Facebook to communicate with regulars outside of Zwift, so perhaps this matter is discussed there. I’m not on Facebook and just rely on what I see in the Zwift Companion app almost entirely.
i remembered to fix my group ride ahead of schedule this time, but it’s such a strange thing to have to do. my ride is supposed to start at 8:25pm – it’s odd that daylight savings time should impact that at all. (i understand technically why it does – but that doesn’t mean that it makes any sense)
)