SACRAMENTO, CA - Research into the dangers of daylight saving time show an hour isn't all you stand to lose. Springing forward turns out to be one of the most dangerous times of year.
For truck drivers, odd hours and shifting sleep schedules can be the norm, so losing an hour for daylight saving time doesn't seem like such a big deal.
"You plan for that hour's loss in advance when you know it's coming, so really it shouldn't change anything," truck driver Roderick Branstutter said.
But as big rig drivers will often tell you, it's the other people on the road who are the problem.
"They don't change their sleep pattern on Saturday or Sunday, and so on Monday, they're tired 'cause they stayed up that other hour and it affects people," truck driver Ken Murray said.
A study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that loss of one hour can affect sleep patterns for up to five days, but it's the Monday after the clocks move forward that sees a surge in traffic accidents.
Problems behind the wheel aren't the only ones. Other studies found that heart attacks and suicides are more common the weeks following the shift, and workplace accidents spike that first Monday. An online petition on the White House website to end Daylight Saving Time had received more than a thousand signatures by Monday afternoon.
The time may have come to leave our clocks alone, but if you ask the average trucker, people could stand to be more flexible.
"I never really even think about it. Really, I never even give it any thought. I mean, it's just an hour, you know," Branstutter said.
by Gabriel Roxas, GRoxas@news10.net
News10/KXTV