Daylight Savings time. “It’s outrageous, when you think about it, for the government to get that involved in every single aspect of our lives.” Utah Rep. Jim Nielson, R-Bountiful.

 

Daylight Saving Time May Hurt Utahns In Pocketbook (KUTV) For nearly 50 years straight – and almost a century intermittently – most of the country has been turning the clocks forward and winding them back twice a year, to save energy, but a recent study estimates Daylight Saving Time (DST) costs the United States at least $434 million per year. The cost is primarily due to an increase in heart attacks and “cyber-loafing,” or workers’ lack of productivity while surfing the Internet the Monday after “springing forward,” which begins on Sunday, March 10, at 2 a.m.
The metrics developed by Virginia-based firm Chmura Economics and Analytics indicate Salt Lake City loses nearly $1.2 million each year because of an elevated number of heart attacks and about $220,000 in increased cyber-loafing due to DST.
       “I had a bunch of emergency room nurses and physicians tell me that they had tracked an increase in heart attacks and an increase in strokes. The change in Daylight Saving Time is tremendously disruptive,” said Utah Rep. Jim Nielson, R-Bountiful. Nielson drafted a bill last year to get rid of DST. His bill was defeated, and, in February, Utah Sen. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George, sponsored a similar bill that also stalled. Nielson, however, hopes to change public opinion about a topic that has more than just an economic impact, he said.
Nielson claims children walking to school during the dark morning without the extra hour of sunlight because of the time change face a higher risk of being hit.

“I don't know how you how you count the human costs of the children that die because they’re killed on their way trying to get to school,” Nielson said

AAA warned the public about possible accidents caused by sleep-deprived drivers returning to work after losing an hour to DST.
Nielson also doubts the very reason DST was implemented: to save electricity.

“We're getting up, it’s already warm, so we turn on our air conditioner sooner,” said Neilson.

But supporters of DST claim adjusting the clocks mean more time for outdoor sports and an increase in revenue for the recreation industry. Some experts, like Michael Downing, author of “Spring Forward,” say more daylight means more shopping.

"If you give Americans daylight at the end of a workday, they're more apt to shop on the way home,” Downing said. Nielson, however, disagrees. “People have a certain amount of money they're going to spend on discretionary activities and, if they spend it on one thing, they won't spend it on something else,” Nielson said. Nielson rejected some of his opponents’ suggestions that his bill was an attempt to pick a fight with the federal government, but he did admit disdain for what he called mandated schedule changes.

“Imagine that the government were to come to you and every member of society and say to you, ‘No longer can you wake up at 7 a.m. You must wake up at 6 a.m. No longer can your church services be at 10; now they must be at 9. If we were to go through our entire society and mandate every single thing that is scheduled has to be changed… that would be absurd, but yet we see the same thing happen.” Nielson said. “It’s outrageous, when you think about it, for the government to get that involved in every single aspect of our lives.”

 http://kutv.com

More car crashes occur after Daylight-Saving Time
A study by researchers at the University of British Columbia at Vancouver analyzed Canadian traffic data between 1986 and 1995 and found an 8 percent increase in traffic accidents on the Monday after the switch to daylight saving time. A similar study published in 2001 analyzed 21 years of deadly auto collisions in the U.S. Authors Jason Varughese of Stanford University and Richard P. Allen of the Johns Hopkins University concluded: "The sleep deprivation on the Monday following the shift to daylight saving time in the spring results in a small increase in fatal accidents." — Baltimore Sun, Jun. 5, 1953 

Baltimore Sun.com 

For most people, the missing hour Sunday means a sleepy Monday. But for some -- particularly those who aren't big on mornings to begin with -- it takes a heavy toll on mood and productivity, earning blame for car accidents, workplace injuries and stock market dips.
"It's an interesting paradox, because traveling one time zone east or west is very easy for anyone to adapt to," said Dr. Alfred Lewy, director of Oregon Health and Science University's Sleep and Mood Disorders Laboratory in Portland. "But in daylight saving time, the new light-dark cycle is perversely working against the body clock. We're getting less sunlight in morning and more in the evening."
The body clock is a cluster of neurons deep inside the brain that generates the circadian rhythm, also known as the sleep-wake cycle. The cycle spans roughly 24 hours, but it's not precise.
"It needs a signal every day to reset it," said Lewy.
The signal is sunlight, which shines in through the eyes and "corrects the cycle from approximately 24 hours to precisely 24 hours," said Lewy. But when the sleep-wake and light-dark cycles don't line up, people can feel out-of-sync, tired and grumpy.
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