…it’s “springing forward” in March that kills.

There’s a hue and cry about daylight saving time (that’s “saving” not “savings”). The main complaint seems to be the stress that results from moving clocks ahead in March:

Springing forward may be hazardous to your health. The Monday following the start of daylight saving time (DST) is a particularly bad one for heart attacks, traffic accidents, workplace injuries and accidental deaths. Now that most Americans have switched their clocks an hour ahead, studies show many will suffer for it.

Most Americans slept about 40 minutes less than normal on Sunday night, according to a 2009 study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology…. Since sleep is important for maintaining the body’s daily performance levels, much of society is broadly feeling the impact of less rest, which can include forgetfulness, impaired memory and a lower sex drive, according to WebMD.

One of the most striking affects of this annual shift: Last year, Colorado researchers reported finding a 25 percent increase in the number of heart attacks that occur on the Monday after DST starts, as compared with a normal Monday…. A cardiologist in Croatia recorded about twice as many heart attacks than expected during that same day, and researchers in Sweden have also witnessed a spike in heart attacks in the week following the time adjustment, particularly among those who were already at risk.

Workplace injuries are more likely to occur on that Monday, too, possibly because workers are more susceptible to a loss of focus due to too little sleep. Researchers at Michigan State University used over 20 years of data from the Mine Safety and Health Administration to determine that three to four more miners than average sustain a work-related injury on the Monday following the start of DST. Those injuries resulted in 2,649 lost days of work, which is a 68 percent increase over the hours lost from injuries on an average day. The team found no effects following the nation’s one-hour shift back to standard time in the fall….

There’s even more bad news: Drivers are more likely to be in a fatal traffic accident on DST’s first Monday, according to a 2001 study in Sleep Medicine. The authors analyzed 21 years of data on fatal traffic accidents in the U.S. and found that, following the start of DST, drivers are in 83.5 accidents as compared with 78.2 on the average Monday. This phenomenon has also been recorded in Canadian drivers and British motorists.

If all that wasn’t enough, a researcher from the University of British Columbia who analyzed three years of data on U.S. fatalities reported that accidental deaths of any kind are more likely in the days following a spring forward. Their 1996 analysis showed a 6.5 percent increase, which meant that about 200 more accidental deaths occurred immediately after the start of DST than would typically occur in a given period of the same length.

I’m convinced. But the solution to the problem isn’t to get rid of DST. No, the solution is to get rid of standard time and use DST year around.

I’m not arguing for year-around DST from an economic standpoint. The evidence about the economic advantages of DST is inconclusive.

I’m arguing for year-around DST as a way to eliminate “spring forward” distress and enjoy an extra hour of daylight in the winter.

Don’t you enjoy those late summer sunsets? I sure do, and a lot other people seem to enjoy them, too. That’s why daylight saving time won’t be abolished.

But if you love those late summer sunsets, you should also enjoy an extra hour of daylight at the end of a drab winter day. I know that I would. And it’s not as if you’d miss anything if the sun rises an hour later in the winter. Even with standard time, most working people and students have to be up and about before sunrise in winter, even though sunrise comes an hour earlier than it would with DST.

How would year-around DST affect you? The following table gives the times of sunrise and sunset on the longest and shortest days of 2017 for nine major cities, north to south and west to east:

I report, you decide. If it were up to me, the decision would be year-around DST.