Should NJ Switch Time Zones?

There have been plenty of rants about Daylight Saving Time, ranging from normal people just grumbling about losing an hour of sleep to doctors pointing out that it can be damaging to health to researchers saying that changing the clocks twice a year is socially and economically disruptive with little-to-no benefit.

How do we fix this? Admittedly I always forget which is "better", to abolish DST or to adopt it permanently. My sister lives in Arizona, one of the only places in the US that doesn't follow the rules when it comes to DST. Again, I forget if they're always or never observing DST, I just know that at some points she's 2 hours behind us, and at other points she's 3.

Why am I bringing this up now? Well, there's a proposal by the Delaware State Senate to move the state out of the Eastern Time Zone, into the Atlantic Time Zone. Doing this would "get Delaware off of the daylight saving merry-go-round once and for all" by allowing the state to exempt itself from changing the clocks by adopting Daylight Saving Time on a permanent basis.

Right now, the Atlantic Time Zone is only comprised of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands (and some parts of Canada). The Atlantic Time Zone doesn't observe DST, so if Delaware were to make the change, it would be free to keep the same time all year round.

Obviously it would be extremely difficult to have one random tiny state along the East Coast be different from the rest. It's not as big a deal in Arizona because there isn't as much inter-state travel, but there are plenty of people that live in Delaware but work in Jersey, or work in Delaware but live in Maryland, or whatever. It would be a huge hassle to lose or gain an hour during your commute, and the legislation acknowledges that if Delaware were to move forward, it would need other states to agree to the switch too.

I don't believe this would ever actually happen, but it's a fun thought to argue about. It really would just come down to what states decided to jump to Atlantic, and which stayed Eastern. We have enough states close together that it would be a huge mess for just a few to change.

I'm a Yankee fan, so it'd be great if all the games started on TV an hour early, but it'd be such a hassle to drive up to the city for a game. One of the weirdest parts of my vacation to Arizona was the time change - it was a 5.5ish hour flight, but landing in Las Vegas left us with a 3 hour time change. My sister lives in Lake Havasu, which is about 2.5 hours from Vegas, but we gained an hour back during the drive, so my internal clock had no idea what time it was supposed to be. I honestly don't think my brain ever really adjusted the whole week I was there.

What do you think? Obviously the easier solution is to just get rid of Daylight Saving Time (or make it permanent, WHATEVER) for the entire country, so we don't have to switch our clocks and get our lives disrupted twice a year. Maybe that's Delaware's goal - propose something ridiculous so that a compromise could be made.

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