Time to turn the clocks ahead! (Yes, everyone else hates it too)
If you hate daylight time and all the confusion and sleep deprivation it brings, you now have solid data on your side.
Awave of new research is bolstering arguments against changing our clocks twice a year — including this weekend, when daylight time begins. (Clocks go ahead one hour at 2 a.m. Sunday.)
The case for daylight time has been shaky for a while. The biannual time change was first widely implemented to save energy during the First World War.
Yet dozens of studies around the world have found that changing the clocks has either minuscule or nonexistent effects on energy use.
After the U.S. state of Indiana finally adopted daylight time — that didn’t happen until 2006 — residents actually used more electricity.
Daylight time isn’t just a benign relic of wartime rationing. The latest research suggests the time change can be harmful to our health and cost us money. The effects are most disruptive in the spring and fall, right after the time changes occur.
Clocks in North America will spring forward Sunday. Most of Europe moves to daylight time two weeks later. The suffering of the spring time change begins with the loss of an hour of sleep. That might not seem like a big deal, but researchers have found it can be dangerous to mess with sleep schedules.
Car accidents, strokes and heart attacks spike in the days after the March time change. It turns out that judges, sleep deprived by daylight time, impose harsher sentences.
Last year, 19 bills were pending in U.S. state legislatures to end the practice, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. None passed.