We set our clocks back this Sunday. This may be the last time ever.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Senate unanimously voted to make Daylight Savings Time (DST) year round.
Senator Marco Rubio from Florida spoke in favor of the Sunshine Protection Act. “One has to ask themselves after a while: Why do we keep doing it?” Mr. Rubio said. “The majority of the American people’s preference is just to stop the back-and-forth changing.”
According to the New York Times, not a single senator objected. Some audibly celebrated.
“Yes!” exclaimed Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, who flashed a big smile and clenched both her fists in triumph as she presided over the chamber.
The act has gotten stalled in the U.S. House of Representatives, as it grapples with bigger problems such as inflation.
And now there is debate about whether Standard Time or Daylight Savings Time should be made permanent. Mexico, after a lengthy debate in its senate, chose to make standard time permanent. Indeed, 60 percent of the world is on permanent standard time.
There are all sorts of studies showing that disrupting our daily schedules causes all sorts of bad things — lost sleep, anxiety, depression, increased accidents, increased stroke, heart attacks, etc. One study estimated a cost of $434 million a year.
As much power as we have given Congress, they do not have the power to create an extra hour of daylight. So you can just set your clocks back and do everything one hour earlier and, voila, everything is the same! Unfortunately, many of us must conform to external times set by schools, churches and workplace.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine says standard time is more closely attuned with our bodies.
“Daylight Savings Time disrupts the body’s natural circadian rhythms and impacts sleep,” said AASM President Jennifer Martin, a licensed clinical psychologist, in a press release. “Standard Time provides a better opportunity to get the right duration of high-quality, restful sleep on a regular basis, which improves our cognition, mood, cardiovascular health, and overall well-being.”
A Monmouth University poll conducted in March found that 61 percent want to ditch the twice-yearly changing of the clocks, compared to 35 percent who want to keep the status quo.
Fifty-nine percent of adults surveyed by YouGov said they would like to see DST made permanent, compared to 19 percent who want Standard Time permanent.
I’m with the majority. I’d much rather have the extra daylight after work than before work.
With dark coming earlier, there are far more pedestrians walking neighborhood streets in the dark for exercise. Many of these streets are poorly lit and lack sidewalks.
I am amazed at how few pedestrians walk at night without reflective clothing or LED lights. Even worse, they often have earbuds in and can’t hear oncoming traffic. That’s a recipe for disaster.
Drivers struck and killed an estimated 7,485 people on foot in 2021 — the most pedestrian deaths in a single year in four decades and an average of 20 deaths every day, according to a new estimate released today by the Governors Highway Safety Association.
That figure represents a striking rise from a decade earlier, when 4,109 pedestrians were killed in traffic.
Night after night, I watch neighbors walking at night with no reflective clothing. To aging eyes on a dim street, they might as well be invisible.
In our neighborhood, the speed limit is 25 miles an hour. If you get hit at that speed, there is a 15 percent chance of death. Serious injury is likely.
Ninety percent of a driver’s reaction depends on vision, and we were just not engineered to see very well in the dark.
The typical 50-year-old driver needs twice as much light to see as well after dark as a 30-year-old. Yet few pedestrians are even aware of this, much less factoring it into their walking precautions. If you are walking at night, don’t listen to music. It’s too dangerous. And please wear some type of reflective clothing.
Wyatt Emmerich is the editor and publisher of The Northside Sun, a weekly newspaper in Jackson. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].
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