Every year there is an increase in the amount of heart attacks and car accidents the day after Daylight Savings Time because of a lack of sleep. I think that we need to get rid of Daylight Savings Time because it is more of a joke than a help because of the effects of it. I’m going to explain the reasons that we should get rid of it whether this be the rough history behind it, the shocking medical statistics, or the energy “savings” it is supposed to have.

First off there is the history behind Daylight Savings Time. According to The Atlantic the first time that Daylight Savings Time was proposed was in 1784 Benjamin Franklin proposed the idea of moving the clocks forward an hour to save candles. Nowadays the thought of using candles solely for light purposes is completely absurd and obsolete in the world of technology that we live in now. The second time DST came up in conversation was when president Woodrow Wilson signed it into office in 1918. This was supposed to help farmers even though they were the biggest group against DST. The reasons they were so much against it was because their cows are set to milk at certain times in the morning and switching that by an hour is bad for their productivity. Also having less time in the morning makes it so farmers have less sunlight to get their crop to market sooner. The last time that DST was messed with was president George W. Bush who extended DST by an hour as part of an energy bill. Now that we have covered the history let’s move onto the health effects it has on our country.

There are many effects on the health of the nation and its people on the day after Daylight Savings Time. According to NBC one of the groups affect people with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and morning people. This is because of less sunlight in the mornings so people with SAD are now waking up in the dark again right as they were getting their mornings back, this can cause people with SAD to feel depressed because they aren’t getting a boost of Vitamin D in the morning. Next would be the increase in heart attacks that occur on the Monday after DST. Most heart attacks occur on Mondays due to work related stress coming off the weekend and other issues that may be going on at the time. A Michigan study showed that on  the Monday after DST there is an increase of 25% when it comes to heart attacks that occur on that day. Which leads us into car accidents which also see an increase in morning accidents which according to CBS New York sees an increase by about 17% and are usually caused by truckers who drive shifts of up to 8 hours at a time when hauling cargo. With health concerns for the people there is also a decrease in productivity in the nation due to people being tired. According to The Atlantic the US loses about $147 million due to lack of sleep, which leads to less productivity, on the following Monday of DST.

Next would be the energy “savings” that DST supposedly is supposed to have. According to the Atlantic first would be the George W. Bush energy bill that was mentioned before. This was a bill that was signed into office in 2005 which extended DST as part of it. The reasoning behind it was to reduce our foreign oil dependency by having people use less energy. Only it ultimately created more energy costs because people were using more heat and AC with the smaller amount of daylight in the morning. So in other words we ended up using more oil than we had before. Another example of lost energy savings was at the Sydney olympic games in 2000 when they extended the time events took place by two hours for the American athletes because of the USA’s DST, and such caused all of the events to be postponed and an inconvenience for everyone involved. The final point would be a study done at UC Berkeley when in 2006 The state of Indiana adopted DST. The study done at the college showed they were in fact using more electricity with the heat and air conditioning running for longer than it normally did. Which goes back to the Bush energy deal that didn’t work out.

In the end after looking at the history of Daylight Savings Time, the health effects of it, and the unneeded energy costs it brings with it, this all shows that DST is a waste of time, money, and health. So the next time we turn our clocks back they should stay back.