AVONDALE, Ariz. — In every room of his stucco two-story house in this Phoenix suburb, Ray Harwood has a clock, or two or three — digital, satellite or with a pendulum. He keeps the time on his wrist, on counters,
AVONDALE, Ariz. — In every room of his stucco two-story house in this Phoenix suburb, Ray Harwood has a clock, or two or three — digital, satellite or with a pendulum. He keeps the time on his wrist, on counters, desks and walls, and even on his bedroom ceiling.
Harwood, 63, has a slight obsession with time and an opinion that we should stop messing with it.
He lives in one of the two states — the other is Hawaii — that don’t change their clocks twice a year for daylight saving time. And Harwood has started to wonder why other states do. In the last few years, he has become one of just a few hobbyists who are tracking the movement in states to either abolish daylight saving time or stay on it year-round.
The movement to “lock the clock” is growing as more research indicates that the biannual ritual of changing the time is not only annoying to some but harmful to public health, productivity and safety. This year, about half of states have considered or are considering time-related bills.
Bills to abolish daylight saving time have been introduced for years, and have always faced opposition, including from sport and retail industries that say the extra hour of evening sun in the summer brings them more business.
But in the past few years, more states are considering another idea: If everyone likes evening sunlight, why not stay on daylight saving time year-round? Bills have been introduced this year in at least six states — including Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and Wyoming — that would effectively move the states to the next time zone to the east.
Under federal law, all states that choose to participate in daylight saving time must do so on the schedule set by the federal government, moving an hour ahead on the second Sunday in March and moving an hour back on the first Sunday in November.
If a state wants to be on daylight saving time year-round, it needs to change time zones. To do this, a state would need to ask Congress to approve a law, or ask the U.S. secretary of transportation for permission. Then, the state would opt out of daylight saving time and stay on the new schedule year-round. On both coasts this year, state lawmakers say they want to team up with lawmakers in other states to ask the federal government for approval.
Some lawmakers who have proposed bills, such as Republican state Rep. Peter Lucido in Michigan, say they don’t care which way their states go, as long as they stop changing the clocks. After Lucido’s bill to abolish daylight saving time faced opposition, he changed it to keep it in place year-round.
“I said either way you want to go, I’m fine with it. But let’s keep the clocks locked,” he said. “Set it and forget it.”
Countries began adopting daylight saving time in the early 1900s as a way to save energy during World War I. The U.S. followed the trend, passing a law in 1918. In 2008, a study by the U.S. Department of Energy showed that, even though nearly 100 years had passed, daylight saving time still helps save energy.
But other researchers have found that it doesn’t. And more people have started questioning the ritual in the last decade as studies have indicated that changing the clocks coincides with negative health effects such as increases in heart attacks and strokes.
The time change in the fall reduces the amount of sleep people get overnight on that Saturday by an average of 40 minutes, which affects behavior the following Monday, according to research co-authored by Christopher Barnes, an associate professor of management at the University of Washington. The loss of sleep does not equal a full hour because the data included the two states that do not participate in daylight saving time, and because some people may change their sleeping habits because of the time change, Barnes said.
Barnes said studies he has co-authored have found that on “Sleepy Monday,” work injuries increase, time spent browsing the internet while at work increases, and peoples’ ability to be aware of the decisions they are making drops. In his latest study, he found that judges hand out stricter sentences on that Monday — something he says signals that the change makes people “more emotionally reactive.”
“It wreaks havoc on all sorts of issues,” he said.
Similarly, Austin Smith, an economist at Miami University in Ohio, found in a study last year that fatal car crashes increase by 5 to 6.5 percent in the days immediately following the change.
There are some firm believers in the benefits of daylight saving time, such as David Prerau, author of the 2005 book “Seize the Daylight.” But while he supports it, he said people wouldn’t like having it year-round.
When states go off daylight saving time in November, turning the clock back makes morning come an hour later, allowing for lighter, warmer mornings. If states that make the switch were to stay on daylight saving time year-round, winter mornings would be darker and colder.
In 1974, the federal government temporarily made daylight saving time year-round in response to a severe energy crisis, and, Prerau said, it “proved to be very unpopular in the middle of the winter, because of the very dark mornings.”
