Had It With Daylight Saving Time? Lawmaker Wants It Scrapped
DETROIT (CBS Detroit) Tired of springing forward and falling back? You're not alone. One local lawmaker wants to scrap Daylight Saving Time in the Mitten.
Macomb County Republican state Rep. Peter Lucido wants to repeal it everywhere in Michigan, except in the U.P.
"It's not a new issue, it's been around the track before and always failed," said WWJ Lansing Bureau Chief Tim Skubick.
He's right. It was introduced just last March by State Rep. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor. And it failed to get traction with legislators.
"There's no indication anything will be different this time around," Skubick said.
Daylight Saving Time is a divisive issue.
The time change was instituted to give winter-weary Michiganders an extra hour of sunlight in the summertime and to save energy costs and usage. Some love it, and others, not so much.
WWJ's morning show co-anchor Roberta Jasina polled her Facebook audience about whether DST should be dismantled and got, as expected, mixed results.
"End it. Every time it changes, it takes a week or so to adjust," wrote Linda Childs Lucas. Agreeing, Christina Garcia DeYonker wrote, "Before this year it didn't matter much to me. Now with an infant, the thought of the upcoming time change scares me! He doesn't understand sleeping in! So now I'd selfishly say -- end it!"
On the other side, Matt Roush from the Engineering Society of Detroit wrote, "It has never bothered me. And I love the long summer evenings where you can read the newspaper outside Up North until 11 p.m..."
Some experts argue it's tough on the body to handle the switch-up, leading to lost sleep, grogginess and general malaise. Accidents and heart attacks are more prevalent on the day following the switch, experts say, as bodies struggle to adjust.
In fact, a University of Michigan study found a 25 percent increase in heart attacks on the first full workday after the time change.
Believe it or not, DST hasn't always been the law in Michigan. The state exempted itself from the federal law in 1966 and didn't adopt it until 1972.
And Lucido, among others, wants it to disappear again.
"Daylight saving time hasn't done what it was supposed to do, which was save energy as a result of needing to have less lights on," Lucido said to Michigan Capitol Confidential. "Empirical studies have shown that it hasn't been effective in achieving that. Meanwhile, modern computers, servers and other electric devices that people rely on — including automobile clocks — don't always make smooth adjustments to the twice-a-year time changes."
"There is also the physiological effect the time switches have on people," Lucido continued. "As a business owner I've seen the negative impacts the time changes can have. People are tired, tardy more often, don't function as well and even suffer ill effects immediately after the changes."