On this Sunday, November 1 at 2 a.m. local time, daylight saving time ends in most of the United States. While more U.S. residents will turn back their clocks before going to sleep on Saturday, people in Hawaii, Arizona, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Virgin Islands will remain on their standard time.
Despite this biannual tradition, no federal law requires that states observe daylight saving time. A federal law originally passed in 1918 and revised in 2005 mandates that areas which observe daylight saving time must switch to standard time at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in November and that these same regions must “spring forward” and lose one hour at the same time on the second Sunday in March.
The origination of daylight savings time is strange, as Congress transferred oversight from the Interstate Commerce Commission to the Department of Transportation in 1966. While the Department of Transportation may seem unfit to deal with time laws, the delegation of daylight saving time dates back to railroads.
Before the regulation, each locality set their own time, which proved difficult when setting railroad schedules. In 1883, the railroad industry established official, national time zones, which Congress eventually adopted into law in 1918.
Part of this law included an observance of daylight saving time, but that section was repealed the next year and ever since, daylight saving time has been up to the discretion of local jurisdictions. The time was finally standardized with the Uniform Time Act in 1966, which allowed states to remain on standard time. Few changes have been made, and the recently set dates for changing clocks remain.
Daylight saving time aims “to adjust daylight hours to when most people are awake and about,” says Bill Mosley, an officer at the U.S. Department of Transportation. The time change decreases daylight in the early morning, therefore making it available during the evening.
Daylight savings may bring many benefits. Some experts claim that it saves energy (though others say it cancels out any savings because people use more electricity in the morning). Research has proven than daylight saving time has reduced traffic accidents as well as crime. And, lastly, more daylight provides more opportunities for children to play outside and use parks.
I much prefer daylight saving time to standard time—I like sunny, warm weather—but at least when switching back to standard time we gain hour.
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What's interesting is that the control over time is actually extremely political and related to identity in some parts of the world. In China, for example, the central government controls time in all regions of its territory (and China's a territory that spans thousands of miles with different ecosystems). A form of oppression for Uyghurs who live on the most western provinces of China is the anchor of time to Beijing's. Many uyghurs in fact contest this time policy by operating on a different time than that set by the central government. So we're lucky here that we have the liberty to do so.
ReplyDeleteLosing day life savings depresses everyone, its a fact. It gets darker earlier and earlier everyday and then instead of adjusting to slow the rate of early nightfall, we do the exact opposite and adjust the time so its dark long before dinner time. Of course this switch makes it so it gets lighter earlier, but who in their right mind gets up before 10 anyway?
ReplyDeleteI think that standard time, all things considered, has got to reduce overall productivity. With more hours of daylight, people tend to be more active and more willing to be out and about getting things done. It's when the sun sets that people tend to think that the day is said and done with, and it's easier just to claim the rest of the night for free time. The hours on the clock are exactly the same, but I'll swear that the way people perceive the amount of ACTUAL time to be productive in a day is based off of the amount of sunlight. Our society has long determined that humans are day creatures.
ReplyDeleteI think this idea came from a stand up comedy show I saw once, but what if we changed daylight savings time to 6 hours instead of 1 hour. Everybody would be confused for the first couple of weeks, but it would be really cool to have sunlight at midnight in a place that is not Alaska.
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