Let's turn out the lights on daylight-saving time - if not for the summer, at least for the month of October.
While this Sunday morning will bring the welcome return of Mountain Standard Time and an extra hour of sleep, do Utahns really need to go through this clock-changing ritual twice a year? The answer is a resounding no.Utah has chosen to fall into line with congressional decree and operate on Mountain Daylight Time from the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October. In the process, it joins much of the nation in disrupting sleep patterns and sending groggy children and workers staggering from their homes in the dark morning hours of April and October. This should not be.
The Utah Legislature should give serious consideration in its next session to joining Hawaii and neighbor Arizona in letting daylight take its natural course. Even without moving clocks ahead an hour, there is plenty of sunshine into the late evening hours of summer to appease most citizens of the Beehive State. Arizona residents have voiced overwhelming support of staying on standard time, and many Utah inhabitants seem to share that sentiment.
And if a complete abolishment of DST is too radical a move at present, legislators should move the end of daylight-saving time in Utah back to the first Sunday in October. Too many school children are walking to their destinations in the dark and cold of October mornings, with their safety jeopardized. At least three Utah youngsters have been struck and killed the past five years in the darkness artificially created by DST.
Let's put time management back in the hands of Mother Nature, where it belongs.