People across Iowa will set their clocks forward one hour tonight because of Daylight Saving Time. That means if they go to bed at their regular time they will lose an hour of sleep.

Hopefully, they will also replace the batteries in their smoke detectors that use 9-volt batteries.

Serving as a reminder to replace the smoke detector batteries is a nice advantage of the twice yearly ritual of changing the clocks. The other advantages to changing the clocks are less and less apparent.

For as long as anybody can remember, Iowans have been changing their clocks twice a year for Daylight Saving Time.

Each spring, they set the clock ahead one hour and each fall they set it back one hour. Spring forward, fall back is the rule.

Some version of Daylight Saving Time started in 1918, making it a relic of World War I. The clock changes were standardized by the Uniform Time Act of 1966 and were changed by the Energy Policy Act of 2007.

Daylight Saving Time has had a long history, and it probably made sense when it was initiated. But the reasons that made starting Daylight Saving Time a smart move just don’t seem to exist today.

The annual ritual of springing forward one hour in the spring and falling back one hour in the fall just doesn’t seem to make sense anymore. There is confusion every year around the clock change, but there never seems to be any real benefit to doing it. Therefore, we should stop doing it.

Former State Rep. Mike Sexton, R-Rockwell City, had previously introduced a bill that would eventually stop the clock changes in Iowa.

Sexton’s bill would allow Iowa to petition the federal government to opt out of Daylight Saving Time. But under his proposal the state would not actually do that until surrounding states did the same thing.

The bill went nowhere and there apparently is no legislation on Daylight Saving Time now. We wish the Congress would address the issue, as it truly is a national matter.

We hope that someday the clock-changing routine will go away. But make sure you set your clocks forward one hour tonight.