For many people, Daylight Savings Time is just one of those things. It’s a minor inconvenience, but with everything else going on in our lives, we just deal with it twice a year and move on. We adapt, we adjust, because that’s what human beings are good at.
That said, other people are flat-out fed up with being forced to change their clocks twice a year for no discernible reason, and want it to stop.
What can I, a US citizen, do to help get Daylight savings time cancelled?
byu/LOCHO53 inNoStupidQuestions
If you’re one the latter types and are ready to do whatever it takes to make it happen, here are 13 suggestions for what you could try.
13. Start a petition.
Call/ write a senator or congressman or start a petition.
12. Call your representatives.
The entire west coast has already agreed to switch to permanent daylight time, and just needs Congress to pass a law to allow it before we’re scheduled to “fall back,” which I don’t think actually has any congressional opposition, but just hasn’t been a priority.
It will most likely happen in the next few months.
11. Support Andrew Yang?
Andrew Yang actually has this as a policy of his for if he becomes president.
10. It’s more than an inconvenience.
Are There Really More Accidents Around Daylight Saving Time Changes?
Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder studied the daylight saving time period (from March to November) for 10 years and discovered there was a 17 percent increase in traffic incident-related deaths the Monday after the spring time change. Traffic fatalities all that week were also higher than average. Some of the effects can be attributed to lower visibility (the fact that it’s earlier, and therefore darker, than drivers are accustomed to), but most of the accidents, experts say, are because people are struggling to stay awake behind the wheel.
The traffic statistics alone seem like pretty conclusive evidence that daylight saving time is more than a mere inconvenience. And researchers say that the grogginess we feel for the first couple of days after we change the clocks might just be scratching the surface of how our bodies actually process the disruption. People who only sleep four or five hours a night under normal circumstances are at a much higher risk of causing a car crash than people who sleep six or seven hours a night, and people who get eight hours of sleep or more are least likely to cause a crash. But when sleep cycles get disrupted, everyone gets messed up.
9. Put it to the people.
Depending on your state you may be able to bypass your legislature and submit an amendment directly to voters by gathering enough signatures.
Technically once that happens the federal government would still need to give your state a waiver but if enough states do this the movement will have the political capital for this to happen.
Thank you for your interest in this and you are doing the lord’s work.
8. It could cause confusion.
The problem with using “permanent daylight savings time“ is that it will put you into the next time zone on the map. Congress wouldn’t have an issue if people just wanted to do away with daylight savings time altogether, but wanting to stay in daylight savings time causes problems.
The local time within a time zone is defined by its offset (difference) from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the world’s time standard. This offset is expressed as either UTC– or UTC+ and the number of hours. So time zones are an international thing that are drawn on maps and wanting to push entire portions of the country one time zone to the right really screws things up and take much more consideration than if a state just wants to do away with daylight savings time.
7. The struggle is real.
People think I’m an idiot for wanting the whole world to go to a single time and dump time zones (and DST) completely.
They just don’t know the struggle as a software engineer.
6. Those West-coasters are on top of things.
If you live in Washington state you are in luck.
We’re in the process of opting out now.
5. Seems unlikely.
Become a multibillionaire with one or more well-funded lobbying firms and super-PACs under your direct control.
Nobody else has any voice to get anything accomplished in America anymore, big or small.
Well, you could probably get local ordinances or even state law changed at the multimillionaire level, but Daylight Savings Time is a national issue, so…
4. State representatives, too.
CA and WA are not opting out.
They are trying to move to permanent daylight savings (sorta just changing their time zone in a way).
But while states have the authority to opt out they cannot opt to permanently change their time zone without federal approval.
Either way contacting your state representative is probably the best realistic route.
3. Not everyone is the same.
Unpopular opinion but I don’t like DST. I’d prefer standard time. Sure the sun might go down later but where I live in MN at least the sun still goes down before I’m out of class/work anyway. I wouldn’t know the difference if the sun set at 4:30 or 5:30.
We’d get the earlier sunrise meaning it’s easier to wake up all year, and the sun wouldn’t be out so late in the evening so I could actually sleep.
And FWIW I enjoy the dark melancholy. It makes me more productive and kind of grounds me to where I am so to speak. I know that’s totally opinion based but maybe others feel the same way!
2. That’s a real shame.
Move to Arizona, we don’t observe it there. Moved to Oklahoma and now I’m all f%cked up.
Can’t change the time on my coffee pot.
1. It’s cute that people still think non-partisan issues exist.
Write your congressman.
With non partisan issues like this, just one person expressing concern can have a lot of influence on what that congressman does.
I’ve gotta say, I’m way more bothered by it now that I have kids!
Are you going to start campaigning, or go back to your bi-annual grumble? Tell us which and why in the comments!
