Daylight Saving Time: Is It a Good Idea?

Daylight saving time entails the practice of advancing clocks by one hour in spring and moving the clocks back by one hour in the fall.

The benefits of daylight saving time are questionable at best. Some point to the extra hour of daylight in the afternoon following school or work that can be used for outdoor activities. Offsetting this, however, is that those traveling to work or school in the morning may have to do so in darkness, which may increase their risk of accidents. The number of daylight hours in the day depends on latitude and the calendar and cannot be changed by any act of Congress.

Some proponents of daylight saving time claim that it results in an energy saving due to the extra hour of daylight in the afternoon, resulting in a corresponding reduction in the need for electric lighting. However, any energy saving as a result of the decreased use of electric lights is likely to be more than offset by the increased use of air conditioning.

The costs associated with daylight saving time are rather substantial. There is the labor required to reset all of the clocks twice a year, labor that could be put to more productive use. Many people experience jet lag for a few days following the time change as their biological clocks adjust to the new time. This time change can result in people being late for their appointments or missing them entirely. Taking daylight saving time into account results in an added degree of complexity for systems involving scheduling. For example, suppose an airline flight is scheduled to arrive at 1:30 AM local time in the morning of the fall time change. Due to the time change, 1:30 AM could refer to either of two points in time an hour apart. If the airline scheduling system fails to properly accommodate this time change, the flight in question might be in the air an hour longer than planned and possibly run out of fuel, with catastrophic results.

Whatever possible benefit in added afternoon daylight or energy saving that might be obtained by daylight saving time could be realized a lot more effectively and efficiently by having individual businesses seasonally adjust their hours of operation to maximally benefit from the longer summer days.

There’s an old joke: “How many <members of a disparaged group> does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: One to hold the bulb and two to turn the chair.” This joke serves as an apt metaphor for a policy that seeks to accomplish a goal by an egregiously inefficient means. Daylight saving time is indeed a chair-turner and should be ended forthwith.