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PN reader helps link to argument that Daylight Saving Time has outlived benefits; Illinois Senate also advances argument

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Above / Does changing clocks in the fall and again in the spring provide a better Good Morning, America! for the nation? Is it time for the Illinois State House to join the State Senate and vote for the end of Daylight Saving Time?

UPDATE, October 12, 2020 / Here we go again with plans to turn back our clocks on Nov. 1. For several years, PN has been advocating the end to this untimely ritual. Last week while on vacation, news was heard around the U.S. that Senators in Florida introduced legislation that would keep Daylight Saving Time (DST) through Nov. 7, 2021. Stay tuned.

UPDATE, March 8, 2020 / Changing our clocks twice per year messes with many daily routines and sleep patterns. Unfortunately, the initiative passed in the Illinois Senate is stalled in the Illinois House. Talk to your State and Federal representatives. We think the time to change to Daylight Saving Time all year is past due.

UPDATE, November 13, 2019 / According to news reports throughout Illinois yesterday, the majority in the Illinois Senate thinks it’s time to end the biannual clock-changing responsibilities, a proposal introduced earlier this year by State Senator Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill. The Illinois Senate passed Senate Bill 533 on Nov. 12, 2019. If also passed by the Illinois House, the proposal would make March 2020 the last time Illinoisans spring their clocks forward.

The amendment reads, “daylight saving time shall be the year-round standard time of the entire State.”

Let your State Representatives know how you’d like them to vote on a bill that would put an end to clock changing. In Naperville, residents are represented by Stephanie Kifowit (84th District), Anne Stava-Murray (81st District) and Grant Wehrli (41st District).

UPDATE, November 3, 2019 / Remember to set clocks back at 2AM Sun., Nov. 3, as Daylight Saving Time ends. It’ll be a little brighter early in the morning and a little darker earlier in the evening, Then the days continually grow shorter until the winter solstice arrives on December 21.

During winter the days begin to grow longer again. On March 8, 2020, Daylight Saving Time begins again.

Perhaps consider if you think it’s time to follow Hawaii and Arizona. Should Illinois become one of the U.S. states asking to do away with Daylight Saving Time? Try to imagine the efficiency, public safety and cost savings.

We’re still wondering why we still change times back and forth. 

Here’s a repeat and a repost of a story with some arguments for staying on the same time all the time.

—PN

P.S. Let us add an “ever wonder.” Ever wonder why you’ll never win an argument if you don’t present the arguments?


Original Post, March 11, 2018 / Sunday at 1:59AM we watched a number of our digital clocks turn to 3AM in a second’s time, and we went to sleep mindful that we’d already lost an hour on March 11, 2018.

What many arguments do not address is another issue—all the blasted time wasted with costs to turn clocks forward and backward with time changes twice a year.

Also, is time better spent with daylight hours of “falling back” four months a year or “springing forward” during the other eight? Choose one option.

Above / The clock tower at Fredenhagen Park requires staff time to change it twice a year.

We appreciate that PN reader Pat Benton forwarded the following online story titled “Proof that Daylight Saving Time is Dumb, Dangerous and Costly,” by Ben Steverman posted March 10, 2017, on Bloomberg.

In our opinion, changing clocks twice a year is what is dumb, unnecessary and outdated.

Meanwhile, it’s 8:20AM Sun., March 11, 2018. Be sure your clocks spring forward, timed with this reminder that spring begins again on Tues., March 20, the same day this year when an informed electorate is encouraged to vote in the 2018 Illinois General Primary Election.

The case against changing the clocks keeps getting stronger

By Ben Steverman

Who will change the clock on the golf course at Naperville Country Club?

If you hate daylight saving time and all the confusion and sleep deprivation it brings, you now have solid data on your side. A wave of new research is bolstering arguments against changing our clocks twice a year.

The case for daylight saving time has been shaky for a while. The biannual time change was originally implemented to save energy. Yet dozens of studies around the world have found that changing the clocks has either minuscule or non-existent effects on energy use. After Indiana finally implemented daylight saving, something that didn’t happen until 2006, residents actually used more electricity.

Daylight saving time isn’t just a benign relic of the 1970s energy crisis. 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 the U.S. will spring forward this year on Sunday, March 12. (March 11 in 2018) Most of Europe moves to daylight saving time two weeks later.

Clocks around town will change.

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 accidentsstrokes, and heart attacks spike in the days after the March time change. It turns out that judges, sleep deprived by daylight saving, impose harsher sentences.

“Even mild changes to sleep patterns can affect human capital in significant ways,” two Cornell University researchers, Lawrence Jin and Nicolas Ziebarth, wrote (PDF) last year.

Some of the last defenders of daylight saving time have been a cluster of business groups who assume the change helps stimulate consumer spending. That’s not true either, according to recent analysis of 380 million bank and credit-card transactions by the JPMorgan Chase Institute.

The study compared Los Angeles with Phoenix in the 30 days after the March and November time changes. Arizona is a natural test case since it’s one of the two states, along with Hawaii, that doesn’t do daylight saving. In the spring, according to the consumer transaction data, the additional hour of evening daylight in Los Angeles managed to slightly boost card spending per person, compared with that in Phoenix, although by less than 1 percent. That spending uptick is swamped by the negative impact of the November time change, which sees the darkened population of Los Angeles spend 3.5 percent less at local retailers.

Even when it snows in an untimely fashion, a clock tower at the gateway to downtown Naperville needs to be changed by the Naperville Park District.

After the autumn time change, shoppers made far fewer trips to the store, especially during the week. Grocery stores, discount stores, and other retailers bore the brunt, while restaurants and service businesses were mostly unaffected.

In other words, daylight turns out to be a surprisingly large factor in how often workers stop at stores on their way home from their jobs in the evening. “At the end of the day, it’s either dark or light, and [people are] going to make an impulse decision at that point,” Diana Farrell, president and chief executive of the JPMorgan Chase Institute.

One possible explanation for the sharp spending decline, Farrell said, is that the extra hour of darkness could push more people to shop online rather than in-person. The study looked only at transactions via local retailers.

Daylight saving time may threaten our health, hurt local retailers, and otherwise disrupt our lives. But can anything be done about it?

As Hawaii and Arizona show, the U.S. government gives states a choice as to whether to adopt daylight saving time. But states aren’t currently allowed to switch to daylight saving time year-round. Last year, 19 bills were pending in state legislatures around the U.S. to end the biannual time change, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. None passed.

Daylight saving is “an example of how sticky policy can be,” Farrell said.

Since the beginning of the year, state legislators have introduced an additional 20 bills on the topic, according to the NCSL. Eleven bills, including proposals in Texas and California, would put states permanently on standard time; nine of the bills aim to make daylight saving time permanent, many of them by urging lawmakers in Washington to change the rules.

That looks unlikely. In a search of bills pending in the U.S. Congress this year and last year, none mention daylight saving.

Editor’s Note: Ben Steverman’s post on Bloomberg includes graphs. To read the story saved in the Bloomberg archive, you’ll need to be a Bloomberg Professional Service Subscriber.  www.bloomberg.com.

Note also that in Daylight Saving Time there’s no S at the end of Saving. Saving is singular.

Readers! Share your thoughts. Times they are changin’. Thanks for reading PN in print and online.

Thanks, Polly and Pat Benton, for your contributions to the community and to PN!

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PN Editor
An editor is someone who prepares content for publishing. It entered English, the American Language, via French. Its modern sense for newspapers has been around since about 1800.

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