If It Ticks It Means It’s Time to Spring Ahead

If you like daylight-saving time, things are breaking your way.

You may, in fact, be almost as happy as the Barbecue Industry Assn., the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Assn., the Amateur Softball Assn., the Retinitis Pigmentosa (“night blindness”) Foundation and others in the National Daylight Saving Coalition.

For years, the coalition lobbied Congress to expand the customary six-month DST period and finally, last June, persuaded the lawmakers to throw in an extra three weeks.

Consequently, clocks are to be set ahead one hour at 2 a.m. on Sunday, the first Sunday in April, rather than the last Sunday in April as previously.

They still must “fall back” again an hour the last Sunday in October, however.

This doesn’t particularly please several other groups in the coalition, including the Chocolate Manufacturers Assn. and the National Candy Wholesalers Assn., who wanted daylight time extended until the first Sunday in November.

They had argued that adding a week at the other end would make Halloween safer for children. Not to mention the possibility that this would lead to more trick-or-treaters on the streets and an increased need for candy to satisfy their demands.

The farmers and other residents of rural America, of course, don’t like any of it. They complain about having to begin chores, milk impatient cows and send their children to school before the sun is up.

Some daylight-saving time lovers contend that more light in the evening means less crime and fewer traffic accidents. But those in the country who oppose DST argue that there is more danger to children waiting at bus stops in the darkness of the morning.

Problems on Western Fringes

The latter is a particular problem along the western edges of a time zone where daylight may still be an hour away while the east side of the zone--where clocks show the same hour--already has greeted the sunrise.

Daylight-saving time, as one may or may not recall, began during World War I in 1918 as a means of saving fuel by reducing the need for lights in the evenings. The idea was dropped after that war, but was reinstated from 1942 to 1945 in World War II as “War Time.”

Some states continued it after that war, but it wasn’t until 1966 that Congress adopted the current system.

Just to complicate things, however, Congress allowed individual states to count themselves out. Thus, DST will not apply in Arizona, Hawaii and most of Indiana.