>I still don't see how is 02:03:13 PM more readable than 14:03:13 - both are sets of numbers, but the first one has an ambiguous piece which needs an additional qualifier to disambiguate it, and that one is detached, at the opposite end of the string. In my book, that's less readable. More traditional and habitual, yes, but I wouldn't go so far to call it more readable.

In my book, better readability leads to better comprehension. An American typically sees 2:05 PM as one phrase and has to make no mental transformation to get the exact meaning. The same person sees 14:05 and needs to perform the arithmetic to convert it to a comprehensible time reference.

It's not that the 12 hour clock is more traditional. It's that the 24 hour clock is used in only a few specialized instances. I would go so far as to say that a piece of software designed for a typical American user and presenting time in a 24 hour format is significantly less readble than the same software for the same user displaying times in a 12 hour format.