OPINION:
On Sunday, we will again gain an extra hour of sleep by ending daylight saving time.
Then, on the second Sunday in March, most Americans lose an hour by reversing clocks to restart daylight saving time.
We must end this foolish messing with time.
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That sleepy Sunday morning in late winter, church attendance is sparse. Some folks sleep through it, and a few more sociable congregants arrive in time for the coffee hour.
The latter offers some of the faithful a reprieve from sermons on social justice premised on amateur economics, as proselytized by woke theologians and misguided social scientists.
More important, our sleep rhythms take a week or so to adjust.
A 2020 study of fatal car accidents showed a 6% spike in fatal crashes the first week of daylight saving time. Tired workers are less productive, and children are less attuned to learning.
We are much less upset by getting an extra hour of sleep on the first Sunday in November when we switch back to standard time.
Daylight saving time was initiated during World War I to save energy and was reinstated during World War II for the same reason. Instead of sleeping during the early morning hours when the sun was already up, the sleight of hand with the clock shifted daylight into the early evenings, saving electricity use.
Nowadays, that is a dubious reason to keep the practice. Work patterns and driving habits have changed, and the use of air conditioning increases as we return home sooner to warmer homes.
Clock switching is unpopular.
Recent AP-NORC and YouGov polls indicate that fewer than one-sixth of Americans support semiannual clock tinkering. About two-thirds of Americans would like the semiannual time adjustment to stop, and most of those would prefer year-round daylight saving time.
Until the railroads standardized time in the latter half of the 19th century, Americans set their watches against local sundials. New York was minutes ahead of Washington and behind Boston.
The advent of railroads made that convention impossible. Those first published schedules were based on the time at their company’s headquarters and left it to communities along their lines to determine local times.
Eventually, they adopted a more or less unified system of time zones of peculiar formation: the western border of the Eastern time zone ran through the major stations in Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Charleston and Atlanta.
Time zones were formalized by the railroads with the 1883 General Time Convention and became federal law with the 1918 Standard Time Act. That act charged the Interstate Commerce Commission with setting the boundaries.
After World War I, New York City and many other metro areas continued seasonal daylight saving time. It was national policy again for World War II and was continued by many states afterward.
It became a permanent national policy in 1966 with the Uniform Time Act.
The end and start dates have been tinkered with since, endlessly studied by psychologists and physicians and cursed the morning after its commencement annually by a sleep-deprived public.
Alas, most fun things that tamper with nature are either immoral, illegal or unhealthy.
Scientists say year-round standard time would be better for us. Our biological functions are attuned to the movements of the sun. Morning light triggers alertness, modulates our stress responses and regulates our emotions. Evening darkness releases melatonin that helps us sleep.
Year-round daylight saving time — especially in Northern states where the amount of daylight varies more with the seasons — could increase emotional disorders, obesity, heart attacks, diabetes and all manner of ailments associated with modern living.
Those problems would be especially acute on the Western edges of time zones where sunrises are later.
More children would be traveling to school in the dark, which caused a furor when year-round daylight saving time was briefly implemented in 1974 during an energy crisis.
The House recently passed the Sunshine Protection Act to implement year-round daylight saving time, but it faces opposition in the Senate — led by senators such as Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton — on health, safety and practical grounds that extend beyond geographic self-interest.
The bill would permit states to opt out by adopting standard time, effectively switching time zones.
Current law does not permit individual states to adopt year-round daylight saving time, but 19 states have laws that would implement it if federal law changed.
Nowadays, fewer children walk or bike to school, and they carry flashlights built into their cellphones.
Americans already ignore their metabolic cues by rising in the dark to finish work earlier in the day, thereby stealing hours of evening sunlight.
Often, schools ignore the sun anyway.
For 25 years, when my wife taught in Fairfax County, Virginia, her first classes began at 7:20 a.m. The children with long bus rides were up before dawn no matter the clock.
Many Americans already set their own schedules; remote work enables nocturnal personalities to thrive.
This column is routinely written between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. Phones do not ring, my mind is undistracted, and my emotions are not rattled by markets and politicians.
The Senate should stop blocking what most people want and let state legislatures choose between daylight saving time and standard time.
• Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.
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