Will California End Daylight Saving Time?

Get ready to set your clock forward this Sunday for the start of daylight saving time. If the thought of losing an hour of sleep makes you roll your eyes and grumble, you are not alone. Recent national polls show that nearly half of adults think daylight saving time is not worth the hassle.

One local critic of turning his clock forward in the spring and back in the fall is Richard Chavez. He frequents the daily lunch for seniors at the Berryessa Community Center in San Jose.

"A lot of us seniors, we forget. It's confusing," says Chavez, after finishing the last of a fish sandwich. "You get used to the time, and then they are changing it again. Just leave it alone one way or the other!"

Chavez remembers when California voters first approved the statewide observance of daylight saving time in 1949 through a ballot proposition.

Those 1949 supporters said the practice "gives people an extra hour of daylight after they get home, and thus increases public health and industrial efficiency," among other advantages. But Chavez contends he has never personally felt much benefit from it.

After feedback from constituents like Chavez, Assemblymember Kansen Chu, D-San Jose, introduced a bill that would allow voters to weigh in on whether the state should keep the practice of switching to daylight saving time. Potential alternatives, according to Chu, would be for the state to observe either standard time or daylight saving time permanently.

"A lot of my constituents would love to stay on daylight saving time year round," said Chu. "The older you get, giving up an hour of sleep has more impact on your physical condition."

Chu cites recent studies linking the jetlag effect some people feel right after changing to daylight saving time with an uptick of heart attacks, and traffic and workplace injuries.

Why Do We Have Daylight Saving Time Anyway?

Benjamin Franklin proposed making more efficient use of daylight to save candles in a 1784 letter. But British businessman William Willett is credited with spreading the idea of tinkering with clocks to make better use of daylight in Britain and other parts of Europe.

Willett persistently lobbied the British parliament  to adopt this change in the early 1900s. However, he died before Britons began observing it in 1916, a few months after Germany became the first country to implement the practice.

The U.S. as a whole first tried daylight saving time during World War I to save energy, and then again during World War II. But afterward, the decision to adopt daylight saving was up to cities and towns. Chaos ensued.

"You could have one town that doesn't have daylight saving time, the neighboring town does, and then the third neighboring town has daylight saving time but starts and ends in different dates. So it got to be very confusing," says David Prerau, author of Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time.

Iowa alone had 23 different sets of starting and ending dates for daylight saving time, says Prerau, causing a major headache for businessmen and others traveling from one town to another.

Congress intervened in 1966 with the Uniform Time Act that gave states two options: keep daylight saving time during federally mandated dates or stay on standard time year round. Most states opted for a coordinated daylight saving time. (Hawaii never observed it; Arizona opted out in 1968.) Initially, daylight saving time lasted only six months.

The U.S. Department of Transportation, which oversees the uniform observance of daylight saving time, says having most people go about their business while the sun is shining saves electricity,  prevents traffic deaths and injuries, and even reduces crime.

Prerau researched for years the benefits of daylight saving time for the federal government, when the country was looking for ways to reduce energy consumption during the 1970s oil crisis. After the results were out, Congress issued months-long extensions of the practice in 1974 and 1975.

Today, daylight saving time begins at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday in March, and ends at 2 a.m. the first Sunday of November.

Still, not everyone agrees with those energy saving claims, including one widely cited study conducted after Indiana adopted daylight saving time in 2006 questions its effects.

"Energy consumption is much more complex than back in the 40s," says Assemblymember Chu, an electrical engineer who used to work for IBM. "It's about time for us to revisit this practice that we have been doing for the last 70 years."

Prerau counters that adjusting our clocks to maximize activity during daylight continues to be worth it.

"The negatives of switching the clock affect some people the first few days of a daylight saving time period, at most," says Prerau. "But the benefits go on for eight months."

For California or other states to opt daylight saving time year round (instead of standard time), Congress would have to amend federal law. Chu is working on a resolution that -- if approved by the Legislature -- would make that request to Congress.

Quitting the current switch to daylight saving time would leave California out of sync with most of the country. Prerau says that could hurt businesses and cause headaches in airline and other transportation schedules.