Washington: The concept behind daylight-saving time is to move an hour of sunlight to the evening so that people could do more with the light.
Some argue that an hour of daylight in the morning gets wasted since most people sleep through it. Hence, it's more logical to move it to the evening.
An extra hour of daylight also means more time to spend money.
“Americans really do leave their homes when there is more sunlight at the end of the day,” said Michael Downing, author of “Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time.”
“We go to the parks, and we go to the mall, but we don’t walk there,” he said. “Daylight saving increases gasoline consumption,” the seattletimes.com quoted Downing as saying.
The Association for Convenience and Fuel Retailing, a lobbying group for convenience stores, said the industry added about $1 billion in annual sales since it lobbied to add a month to daylight saving in 1986.
Those in the leisure industry have also benefited, Downing said.
However, there are many who still oppose the idea of daylight saving time.
Some argue that daylight-saving time disrupts farmers’ schedules. Parents have also complained about having their children walk to school in the dark.
Some have argued that it leads to more traffic accidents. Others say it leads to heart attacks and strokes.
