If you woke up this morning in a haze and needed an extra cup or four of coffee to get going, you can probably blame Daylight Saving Time. Or your hangover. But probably DST.
On Sunday morning at 2:00am our clocks jumped an hour ahead, forcing millions to lose out on a crucial hour of weekend sleep. If you think that the practice of springing forward and falling back is archaic and unnecessary, you’re not alone. And there’s a White House petition that I’d like to bring to your attention.
Hosted on the White House’s We The People online petition site, “Eliminate the bi-annual time change caused by Daylight Savings Time” has garnered over 19,000 signatures in less than a week. If it can get 100,000 by April 4th, it will warrant an official response from the Obama administration.
Here’s the argument proposed by creator C.D. from Loveland, Ohio:
Daylight Savings Time is an archaic practice in our modern society.
The original reasons for the policies are no longer applicable, and the most cited reason for keeping DST (energy savings) has never been shown to be true.
Some industries still like DST (like sporting equipment retailers), but there are many more who dislike the changed hours (like television).
The real issue, however is not the later hours or extra sunlight. Studies have shown that changing the clocks is responsible for health problems (including increased heart attack and vehicular accident risks) and leads to hundreds of thousands of hours of lost productivity in workplaces across the country. Also: It’s really annoying.
We should either eliminate DST or make it the year-round standard time for the whole country.
The L.A. Times calls today one of “the most dangerous days of the year,” according to numerous reports that say that the Monday after the start of Daylight Saving Time is a very bad day for most of the country. Different reports from various studies have tied the onset of DST to more heart attacks, more traffic accidents, more accidents in the workplace, and more.
You can believe that or not, it’s up to you. But I’m sure most of us can agree that losing an hour of your weekend around the beginning of Springtime each year is just plain annoying. What do you think?