Why Daylight Saving needs to go

It’s time once again for my annual plea to the collective common sense of the American people. And no, I’m not about to go on a rant about voting. But seriously, you should vote.

I’m talking about my least favorite day of the year, the awful time we have to set our clocks back an hour. It happens this Saturday night into Sunday morning. We send one precious hour of our lives into the dark abyss never to be seen again.

This is my least favorite day of the year because it’s stupid and the vast majority of people seem to finally agree with me… at least in Europe.

A whopping 84 percent of Europeans say that this yearly ritual has run its course. If it actually had a purpose, that purpose is null and void now in the 21st Century.

Let’s go through the dumb reasons and see if they are still dumb. My gut says they will probably still be dumb.

Allegedly, none other than Benjamin Franklin, after a trip to Paris, floated the idea that America could save on candle consumption by adjusting the time. CANDLES! Come on, what are we talking about here?

Candles? The only candles we light now smell like a spice factory exploded in your house, and usually accompany a bottle of red wine and some bubble bath. Get real.

Next was the idea that we were all saving electricity. This idea has not been fully studied, so we don’t know definitively. Seems like it could be a thing, but is it enough of a thing? I say nay my friend.

Surely our efficiency in electricity production and the advent of alternative energy sources like wind and solar more than make up for any electricity performance gap from the systems in the 19th Century.

To quote a Seattle Times story today, “in their 2008 report, panelists concluded that the total electricity saved in the extended Daylight Saving time amounted to about 0.03 percent of the entire year.” Pffft.

Finally, fewer traffic accidents. Again, might be true in some areas.

But if the idea is that more darkness leads to more accidents, then all we’ve done with this stupid idea is move the darkness from the morning commute to the afternoon commute.

Starting next week, it’ll be dark by the time you get off work at 5 p.m. Even if you get off at 4 p.m., you’ll be in the dark. On stormy days, my radio partner will look out the window a little after three o’clock and angrily say, “It’s already dark out there!”

Happens every year.

Listen, I get it. There are lots of dumb ideas that people do every year. The Elf on the Shelf is a thing. But it’s not a requirement foisted upon us by the government for no good reason.

I know there are more pressing political issues in the week before the election, but surely we can all agree that this needs to stop. Isn’t there one brave senator that can draft the 2019 bill to stop being stupid and end this Daylight Saving fiasco? I’d vote for that.

Editor’s Note: Even VEEP’s Jonah Ryan gets it.

“What Are We Talking About Here” can be heard every weekday at 4:50 p.m. and 6:50 p.m. on the Ron & Don Show on KIRO Radio 97.3 FM.