ATLANTA — As Georgians prepare to “fall back” this weekend, the long-running debate over the need for the twice-a-year time change is resurfacing once again.
Georgia Gwinnett College economics professor Dr. Jason Delaney says the idea of daylight saving time dates back more than a century.
He explains that standard Time itself was first developed in the 1800s for the railroads so that schedules could stay consistent. Contrary to popular belief, he says the time change was not created for farmers.
“Cows don’t really care what the clock says,” Delaney said with a laugh. “So daylight saving time and the formalization of time really had very little to do with agriculture itself.”
Delaney says the original purpose of conserving energy no longer holds up in today’s world. “Mostly, the effect all of the analyses find is small and not very substantial from an economic perspective,” he said. Instead, he agrees that the biggest modern impact of the time change is how it disrupts people’s sleep patterns. “It wrecks people’s sleep,” Delaney said, laughing.
Research from the University of Washington also points to an unusual side effect: more car accidents involving deer occur after the switch to standard Time. The study estimates that keeping the country on daylight saving time could prevent roughly 36,000 such accidents each year.
Georgia lawmakers have already passed a bill to keep the state on daylight saving time permanently, but that change can’t take effect without congressional approval.
For now, residents will set their clocks back one hour on Sunday morning and gain an extra hour of sleep.
WSB’s Sabrina Cupit contributed to this story
