Daylight Saving Time screws us up, so why do we keep springing forward?

This weekend marks the annual switch to Daylight Saving Time. Despite widespread criticisms and a growing body of research finding the time change can have significant impacts on our health, efforts to end Daylight Saving Time continue to flounder.

“There are 15 states that have considered some type of legislation this year,” said Ray Harwood, the founder of Time Zone Report, a new movement dedicated to ending the springing forward and falling back.

A bill to eliminate Daylight Saving Time in Washington state died in committee last month.

Harwood said that’s shortsighted since messing up our sleep can have so many dire consequences.

“Heart attacks increase, traffic accidents increase, workplace incidents increase and suicides tend to increase in the week after Daylight Saving Time starts,” Harwood said.

Lucky for him, he doesn’t have to worry about it. Harwood lives in Arizona, which along with Hawaii, stays on Standard Time year-round. Arizona opted out of Daylight Saving Time in 1968, two years after Congress passed a national time law. The reason was simple. When it’s 120 degrees out, the last thing they need is another hour of daylight.

“We can’t wait for the sun to go down in the summer, so Daylight Saving Time just prolongs the heat of the day,” he said.

That’s not a problem here and across the country, where many cherish their long summer days stretching well into the evening. That’s just one reason why efforts to end Daylight Saving Time continue failing to gain more support.

While the nation originally adopted the time change to help conserve energy during the World Wars, the driving force now is strictly economic, according to Tufts University professor Michael Downing, author of “Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time.”

“The golf industry says every extra month of daylight saving is worth about $400 million in greens fees and equipment sales. Similarly, the barbecue industry profits. Anybody associated with outdoor recreation and sports loves daylight saving,” Downing says.

Daylight saving is also a boon to gas stations, which see a huge spike in sales during the summer months, according to Downing. But he said that in turn negates any arguments that Daylight Saving Time helps conserve energy.

“When Americans go to the ball park or the mall at the end of the day, we don’t walk there. Here’s the dirty secret: daylight saving increases gasoline consumption, and it’s not a small matter,” Downing said.

But for everyone who enjoys the extra daylight, there are many others who pay a heavy price. Dr. Gandis Mazeika, the head of Seattle’s Sound Sleep Health, said it’s understandable accidents increase the Monday after we spring forward.

“We’re giving the entire city of Seattle and the entire United States a case of jet lag all at the same time,” he said. “A certain percentage of those people will be just a little less attentive than they were before and they’re more prone to getting into a fender bender or even a more serious accident.”

There’s little way around the drowsiness. But Mazeika suggested biting the bullet and setting your alarm an hour earlier Sunday morning so you help your body adjust that much sooner.

“By giving yourself a day’s worth of advance, you at least give your body a chance to catch up and you won’t feel quite so tired on Monday,” Mazeika said.

If you’re looking for a bright side, Mazeika said we should all catch up on our sleep and get back to normal within a week – as long as we don’t burn the candle at both ends.