Compelled by the federal Uniform Time Act of 1966, most Americans will leap ahead from one configuration of the clock to another this weekend, as daylight saving time clicks in at 2 a.m. Sunday.
But many people are saying it’s time for time to be left alone. State legislatures from New England to the West Coast are considering proposals to end the confusion of hours lost or gained.
“I cannot change the rotation of the earth and sun,” said Kansen Chu, a California lawmaker who is sponsoring a bill to keep the state permanently on daylight time — one of at least 31 states that are addressing some aspect of daylight saving and its discontents. “But I am hoping to get more sunlight to the people of California.”
Proponents of setting the clock once and being done with it, like Chu, a Democrat from the San Jose area, said that shifting back and forth in the spring and fall, if it ever really made sense, no longer does.
California voters agreed last fall, approving a ballot proposition for year-round daylight time by a wide margin.
Lifestyles and patterns of work are different now than they were when daylight saving first became entrenched nationally during and after World War II. Research, Chu and others said, has shown that human beings just aren’t as flexible about their daily rhythms as they once seemed; accidents, heart attacks and strokes tend to occur in greater numbers around the time shift.
The 1966 law allows states to opt out of daylight saving, and Hawaii and Arizona do so, staying on standard time all year; so does Puerto Rico. But the law does not allow states to opt in all the way, and choose daylight time year-round. So the California proposal, and a similar bill passed by the Florida Legislature last year, would require an act of Congress to take effect.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.