We set our clocks back this past Sunday. Let’s hope this may be the last time ever.
In 2022, the U. S. Senate unanimously voted to make Daylight Savings Time (DST) year round.
Senator Marco Rubio from Florida spoke in favor of the Sunshine Protection Act. “One has to ask themselves after a while: Why do we keep doing it?” Mr. Rubio said. “The majority of the American people’s preference is just to stop the back-and-forth changing.”
According to the New York Times, not a single senator objected. Some audibly celebrated.
“Yes!” exclaimed Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, who flashed a big smile and clenched both her fists in triumph as she presided over the chamber.
The act has gotten stalled in the U. S. House of Representatives, as it grapples with bigger problems.
And now there is debate about whether Standard Time or Daylight Savings Time should be made permanent. Mexico, after a lengthy debate in its senate, chose to make standard time permanent. Indeed, 60 percent of the world is on permanent standard time.
There are all sorts of studies showing that disrupting our daily schedules causes all sorts of bad things — lost sleep, anxiety, depression, increased accidents, increased stroke and heart attacks, etc. One study estimated a cost of $434 million a year.
As much power as we have given Congress, they do not have the power to create an extra hour of daylight. So you can just set your clocks back and do everything one hour earlier and, voila, everything is the same! Unfortunately, many of us must conform to external times set by schools, churches and workplace.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine says standard time is more closely attuned with our bodies.
“Daylight Savings Time disrupts the body’s natural circadian rhythms and impacts sleep,” said AASM President Jennifer Martin, a licensed clinical psychologist, in a press release. “Standard Time provides a better opportunity to get the right duration of high-quality, restful sleep on a regular basis, which improves our cognition, mood, cardiovascular health, and overall well-being.”
A Monmouth University poll conducted in March found that 61 percent want to ditch the twice-yearly changing of the clocks, compared to 35 percent who want to keep the status quo.
Fifty-nine percent of adults surveyed by YouGov said they would like to see DST made permanent, compared to 19 percent who want Standard Time permanent.
I’m with the majority. I’d much rather have the extra daylight after work than before work.
With dark coming earlier, there are far more pedestrians walking neighborhood streets in the dark for exercise. Many of these streets are poorly lit and lack sidewalks.
I am amazed at how few pedestrians walk at night without reflective clothing or LED lights. Even worse, they often have earbuds in and can’t hear oncoming traffic. That’s a recipe for disaster.
In 2023, 7,318 pedestrians were killed in the United States, which is a 5.4% decrease from 2022. This is the first time since the pandemic began that pedestrian deaths have decreased. However, the 2023 number is still 14.1% higher than in 2019, before the pandemic.
That figure represents a striking rise from a decade earlier, when 4,109 pedestrians were killed in traffic.
I live in LOHO, which is bounded by Meadowbrook to the north, Ridgewood to the east, I-55 to the west and Eastover to the south. Our streets are poorly lit.
Night after night, I watch neighbors walking at night with no reflective clothing. To aging eyes on a dim street, they might as well be invisible.
In our neighborhood, the speed limit is 25 miles an hour. If you get hit at that speed, there is a 15 percent chance of death. Serious injury is likely.
Ninety percent of a driver’s reaction depends on vision, and we were just not engineered to see very well in the dark.
The typical 50-year-old driver needs twice as much light to see as well after dark as a 30-year-old. Yet few pedestrians are even aware of this, much less factoring it into their walking precautions. If you are walking at night, don’t listen to music. It’s too dangerous. And please wear some type of reflective clothing.
I drive very slowly at night and I still have scary moments when I am far too close to pedestrians who have failed to wear reflective clothing. Sometimes I will roll down my window and tell them, “Y’all are invisible to me. Please wear reflective clothing!” I’m not trying to be rude. I’m trying to save their lives.
Add speeding and quiet electric cars to this equation and it equals even more deaths. Far too many people speed through neighborhoods. Is a few seconds of time savings really worth the potential trauma of hitting a pedestrian?
November is the month I change from my summer wardrobe to my winter. My summer shirts and pants are as thin as I can find. My winter clothes are as thick as I can find.
Fortunately, it doesn’t get very cold in Mississippi. With thick clothes, usually a vest is sufficient to stay warm. If you like the change of seasons (and I do), Mississippi weather is a perfect average 68 degrees for the year.
I never stop playing golf or tennis during the winter. Typically, there are just a few days each winter too cold to play outdoor sports. And in the winter, It’s cool enough to walk the course, which means come six months from now, I will be five pounds lighter.
November weather is quite nice right through the middle of December. Then we just have six or seven cool weeks and by the middle of February, it starts to warm up again. Not a bad deal.
The biggest drawback to Mississippi weather is that we get our mildest weather when the days are short while up north, they get their mildest weather when the days are long.
