If you’re tired of dark evening commutes, hold on just a little while longer.

Most places in the U.S. – omitting Hawaii and parts of Arizona – will move to daylight saving time on Sunday, March 10 at 2 a.m. That’s when we will “spring forward,” and move our clocks ahead one hour, shifting more daylight hours into the afternoon and evening. DST will be the rule until we “fall back” and set the clocks back an hour on Nov 3.

The time change occurs a little more than a week before spring’s official arrival on March 19 at 10:06 p.m. CT.

The idea of changing time is an old one, with many pointing to Founding Father Benjamin Franklin as the origin of the idea. But according to Kenneth Wright, a sleep researchers with Colorado University Boulder, it became a practice in the U.S. after first being introduced in Germany in 1916 during World War I as an energy saving measure. The U.S. followed suit, adopting DST in 1918 though it was repealed a year later.

Wright told Coloradan Alumni Magazine daylight saving time was reinstituted in 1942 during World War II – again as an energy saving measure – but wasn’t uniform across the U.S. until Congress passed the Uniform Time Act in 1966, which standardized DST and its start and end dates across the country.

More sunlight in the evenings is popular and signals the arrival of warmer weather but it comes at a price, Wright told the magazine, including sleepier morning commutes, icier roads in many places and more school children walking to school or waiting for busses before the sun comes up.

On the other side, extra evening sun can mess with sleep cycles, causing people to go to bed and therefore wake up later.

There are efforts to do away with the changing of the clocks.

In 2021, Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill that would put Alabama on DST year-round, becoming one of 19 states enacting legislation to do away with the time change. The problem is doing that will require Congressional action and, so far, that’s failed to receive bipartisan traction.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, along with other lawmakers, including Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville, reintroduced the Sunshine Protection Act in 2023. The act, which in 2021 passed the Senate but languished in the House, would eliminate the changing of the clocks to standard time and move the U.S. on DST all year. The 2023 version has only made it as far as the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

If the bill ever does pass the Senate, it would require House approval and a presidential signature to become law.