At 2 a.m. Sundy morning, we lost an hour. Yes, folks, it’s that time of year. The days are going to be shorter, which means that many people go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. And many people don’t like that.
A recent poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 4 in 10 Americans would like to see their clocks stay on standard time year-round, while about
3 in 10 prefer to stay on daylight saving time. About another 3 in 10 prefer what is the status quo in most of the United States, switching back and forth between daylight saving time in the summer and standard time in the winter.
Hawaii and Arizona are the only ones where clocks won’t change at 2 a.m. local time today, while most others have done the “spring forward” and “fall back” switches since Congress passed the Uniform Time Act in 1966.
Indiana joined them for more than three decades as a time-change holdout until 2006 when legislators by a single vote approved a business- backed push to have all its counties observe daylight saving time.
Arguments about whether later sunsets or earlier sunrises are better for business or safety aren’t what matter to some people. Jason Oliver, a 43-year-old retired soldier from Rolla, Missouri, is among those who see the clock changes as just “messing things up” and he doesn’t really care which time gets picked.
“To me, I don’t see the need to keep flip flopping between times,” Oliver told the Associated Press .
According to the AP, Sue Dillon became a campaigner for changes to the state’s time choice after a teenager was fatally struck in 2009 while running to catch a school bus in the early morning darkness near her home in Carmel.
Dillon, a former junior high teacher, maintains Indiana’s current sunrise times of 8 a.m. or later during some of the fall and winter are unsafe for children and others walking along roadways.
She’s campaigned for Indiana to switch from the Eastern time zone to Central so sunrises will come earlier — and believes year-round adoption of daylight saving time would be awful for people living on the western edges of the U.S. time zones.
“Sunrise at 9 in the morning?” Dillon said. “The problem is that the children are out when it is dangerous. That is absolutely inexcusable.”
Even President Donald Trump has weighed in, tweeting in March that making daylight saving time permanent is “OK with me!”
It’s OK with us too.
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