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Of all the dreaded Mondays in a year, this could be the worst.
In a number of recent studies, researchers have found that workers drive worse, work less and die more on the Monday after the switch to daylight time.
The onslaught starts even before drowsy employees crawl into their cubicles.
In a 1996 study, University of British Columbia researchers found that the number of traffic accidents in Canada increases by 7 per cent on the first Monday of daylight time.
The reason, says Stanley Coren, lead researcher and renowned sleep expert, is that North Americans are chronically sleep deprived even before they lose an hour to daylight time. Being robbed of that extra hour of shuteye pulls many workers into a state of tiredness called "micro-sleep."
During micro-sleep, which lasts from 10 seconds to one minute, people momentarily lose track of time and place.
What seems like an innocent daydream can be a hazard on the road.
"Suppose you are travelling city speed, around 50 kilometres an hour," Dr. Coren said.
"In just 10 seconds of micro-sleep you can travel the length of a football field. That isn't exactly conducive to traffic safety."
The perils of micro-sleep carry over to the workplace.
In another study, Dr. Coren found that industrial workplace accidents bump up by 6 per cent in the two or three days after we spring forward.
"All this suggests that many of us are essentially impaired on that Monday following the switch to daylight savings time," Dr. Coren said.
But even employees who make it through work without a major mishap today probably won't get much accomplished.
Sleep deprivation taxes the brain's creative capacity, according to Dr. Coren, triggering poor judgment and decision making.
No surprise, then, that disasters such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Chernobyl explosion have been blamed on a manager's lack of Zs.
Add to this toxic workplace brew the fact that sleep deprivation makes us more irritable and prone to snapping at co-workers, and you might just want to call in sick this morning.
But the worst part of all comes via a new U.S. study showing that the switch to daylight time could be all for naught.
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that Indiana households adopting daylight time for the first time in 2006 spent an additional $8.6-million (U.S.) on electricity, debunking the energy-conser- vation argument governments have long given in favour of daylight time.
But don't expect lawmakers to heed the study and ease workers' suffering any time soon. Provincial governments across Canada followed the lead of the U.S. Congress and actually added four weeks to daylight time last year.
How should you cope with this dreaded day aside from avoiding the roads and begging off work?
"It's not rocket science,"
Dr. Coren said. "If everyone just went to bed an hour earlier, these problems wouldn't happen."
