The lost hour of sleep every spring. The lost hour of evening sunlight every fall. It’s brutal.
If changing your clocks at the beginning and end of daylight-saving time each year throws you for a loop, you may be in luck. A bill in the Ohio state Senate would make daylight-saving time permanent all year round.
The Ohio Sunshine Protection Act, sponsored by Kristina Roegner (R., Hudson) and Bob Peterson (R., Fayette County), would not only end the twice-yearly clock changing, it would prohibit municipalities and public agencies from opting out of the year-round plan.
Ohio is one of 48 states that now observes daylight-saving time by adjusting clocks forward one hour in March and one hour back in November. Hawaii and Arizona do not observe daylight-saving time.
But Ohio is not an outlier in the movement to leave the practice behind. Lawmakers in Florida recently passed a similar measure, and in Congress, the Sunshine Protection Act would keep clocks around the country on daylight time year-round.
Senator Roegner pointed to research on the negative effects of the clock-switching. Messing with the time of day — even by an hour — throws off the body clock. Studies show that leaping forward and falling back is responsible for an increase in car crashes and workplace injuries. It’s also to blame for a decrease in workplace productivity.
One solution might be to leave the daylight saving portion of the year behind, but most people would probably prefer to have an extra hour of sunlight in the evening than in the morning. The way to achieve that is to stay on daylight-saving time all year round.
The General Assembly should embrace this sane solution to problems caused by artificially tinkering with time. And Congress should likewise move quickly to pass the bill that will standardize the practice across the country.
Clocks are meant to go round and round, not spring forward or fall back twice a year.
First Published April 2, 2019, 4:00 a.m.
