Can not we just stop resetting the clocks twice a year?

Stephen L. Carter, Bloomberg

published

9h22 PDT, Thursday 1st November 2018

(Bloomberg Opinion) – This weekend, most of the United States added an hour to the clock to switch from the summer time to the normal time. It's a terrible idea. The passage of summer time (and not "savings") is part of a ritual of turbid origin whose benefits rest on unreliable evidence. The reasons currently offered to maintain this change are misleading. The time has come to remove the normal time and stay in the advanced hour all year.

Here, a story could be instructive. The idea of ​​the late hour is usually attributed to George Vernon Hudson, New Zealand entomologist, who gave a paper in 1895 in which he proposed the device as a way to reduce the use of artificial light . His colleagues ridiculed the document for proposing to reverse the way humans have marked time for millennia. They also claimed that Benjamin Franklin had suggested the same thing over a century ago, an assertion that is often repeated but is probably not true.

In the early years of the nation's history, time was largely a local phenomenon, varying from place to place according to social custom. In the middle of the 19th century, however, railways and telegraphs began to press for time to be standardized throughout the country. And despite the civil war, which has severely disrupted the meaning of the daily time of the country, they have mostly succeeded.

But as companies fought for standardization, confusion prevailed. The law was not immune. Buyers sued the vendors for late delivery, while the real problem was that both parties were calculating time under different systems. Criminal law was also involved. In 1895, a Texas Court of Appeals had to decide whether the expiry of a jury's warrant had occurred between midnight, railway time or midnight, with the sun. If the railroad time applied, a convicted murderer would be released. The judges decided that "the meridian of the sun" was the proper method of calculation. "An arbitrary standard put in place by people in business will not be recognized," they said.

Nevertheless, during the First World War, the United States adopted Daylight Saving Time, considering, along with its allies and enemies, that the change would save electricity by allowing workers to enjoy an hour extra daylight. ("Everyone expresses the most keen satisfaction," British newspapers reported after the passage of Germany.)

But Americans did not like having a system of accounting for hours imposed on them. At the end of the war, the summer time was also extended nationwide. Some localities have been stuck in the new timing system. For example, in the spring and summer, there was a one-hour difference in time between New York and the north of the state. Others have resisted. In 1923, the Connecticut legislature voted in favor of banning a business establishment from posting the time in the light of the day. Nevertheless, during the Second World War, President Franklin D. Roosevelt brought DST back, again, to save energy.

Contrary to myth, farmers have hated it. The agriculture lobby led the successful struggle for the repeal of DST (following President Woodrow Wilson's veto) after the end of the First World War. And the farmers were not alone. In 1946, a Kentucky judge ruled that early hour time was unconstitutional. In the same year, the Supreme Court of West Virginia ruled that liquor sellers could remain open at the normal time, notwithstanding local ordinances to force them to change their schedules to accommodate the alcoholic beverage vendors. Daylight Saving Time

The resistance fighters finally fell in the line. Summer time has become almost universal and, in most cases, legally mandatory during the energy crisis of the 1970s. Nowadays, the time of day. was simply part of the background. We take that for granted and the complaints are few. Although "spring forward" causes rumblings about the hour of sleep lost, people seem satisfied with the extra hour of the day. The question, then, is why change. There are good reasons to stick to one program or another – and the best choice is the summer time.

First of all, the change from the time to the normal time probably does not save the energy at all, although it is probably a little bit late for that. On the other hand, as jurists Steve P. Calandrillo and Dustin E. Buehler argue, the switchover at any time in the summer would probably reduce the number of street crimes, which tend to take place in the city. # 39; darkness.

Then there are our bodies. Our circadian rhythm needs time to adjust – and does not have it. An hour of sleep is added or subtracted and we should take care of our business next week as if nothing has happened. The effect is difficult to measure directly, but we can look at the results. Among the perhaps best-known results, several studies show an increase in the number of road accidents as drivers adapt. Many researchers also claim that the biannual change causes a modest increase in heart attacks. (Others are skeptical.)

So it seems that we are hurting society and our physical being, all at the service of a wrong turn dictated by a myth and a habit. So, I jump on the bandwagon. Congress, I'm talking to you. If you want to help us in our daily life, let's abolish the standard time and enjoy the maximum of daylight.