Notably, the sponsor of the Sunshine Protection Act is a Floridian, Rep. Vern Buchanan, whose Tampa Bay district sits farther south than 95% of the U.S. population.

Yes, latitude matters on this issue, because the places farther from the equator have far greater variation in sunrise and sunset times, and this variation is why DST and clock-shifting exist in the first place.

There is more at stake than a couple of nights of disrupted sleep. Very late sunrises could pose dangers for school children. On the other hand, some researchers say that early sunsets are more of a danger. And those twice-a-year clock changes also get blamed for death and illness.

Let’s start with why we change the clocks in the first place.

Daylight Saving Time Explained

The continental U.S. is divided into four time zones. Time zones in the U.S. are roughly set so that solar noon — when the sun is due south and at its highest point in the sky — is around 12:00 p.m., Standard Time.

For instance, in Washington, D.C., the average solar noon is about 12:05 during Standard Time. One hour later, the sun hits solar noon around Chicago, which is why Chicago is in the Central Time Zone. Then an hour later, the sun hits its zenith in Denver, and then an hour after that — at about 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time — Californians get solar noon.

Solar noon wanders a bit throughout the year, but in the middle of a time zone, it will average right around noon, Standard Time.

So why would we mess with Standard Time? Because in the summer, particularly in northern latitudes, we “waste” a lot of daylight due to very early sunrises. In New York City, for instance, the sun rises before 4:30 Standard Time every day in June.

We spend money and burn fossil fuels to keep lights on at night, and so for more than a hundred years, folks have argued we should shift the clock forward an hour in the Spring. That means less sunshine happens while we sleep in, and the evening darkness doesn’t descend until closer to bedtime — thus saving on light bulbs and the energy that powers them. Then in the Fall, we can shift back to Standard Time.

The first such clock shifts legislated by Congress came during World War I, specifically to conserve fuel during the war. The law was quickly repealed.

Franklin Roosevelt went further during World War II, creating permanent DST (he called it “War Time”). Basically, clocks everywhere were shifted an hour later, and they stayed that way until after VJ Day.

The current system was established by the Uniform Time Act in 1966. The darker half of the year was set to Standard Time, but the sunnier half was set to Daylight Saving Time. Over the years, Congress has amended the law, and now DST takes up most of the year, from March 8 to November 1 this year.

The debate

The biggest complaint about the status quo is the semiannual time change. Most adults lose an hour of sleep when the clocks “Spring forward.” Parents of small children suffer in a different way when the clocks “Fall back” (because little Madison and Connor do not care that it is now technically only 5:15 a.m., and they get to sleep in).

The time change is not merely unpleasant, argue the critics. It’s deadly: “Fatal car accidents in the United States spike by 6% during the workweek following the ‘spring forward’ to daylight saving time,” found a 2020 study from the University of Colorado, Boulder, “resulting in about 28 additional deaths each year.”

Other studies have come to similar conclusions: When drivers lose an hour of sleep and suddenly have to adjust to darker morning commutes, they drive worse and crash more.

Some studies even suggest that the annual “Spring forward” might cause heart attacks and strokes on the first Monday and Tuesday of Daylight Saving Time. Though some of that is made up for by fewer heart attacks and strokes when we get the extra hour of sleep at the end of DST.

So that’s the case against changing our clocks twice a year.

If we were to abolish the time changes, we would have to settle on which time to pick: Standard Time, where solar noon is about noon, or Daylight Saving Time, where the sun peaks around 1 pm. (Or we could choose some third option.)

Congress, in the Sunshine Protection Act, has chosen permanent DST, which, of course, doesn’t protect sunshine or save daylight — it merely shifts it later.

Later sunrise, later solar noon, later sunset

One of the best things about summertime is the late sunsets — little kids can play the streets until bedtime, pickup basketball games can start after dinner and last for hours, you can play a late round of golf.

Daylight Saving Time magnifies that benefit. Making it permanent would increase evening sunshine in the months when it’s most scarce: November through February.

Here’s the safety argument for this trade: People walk more at night. These days, as cars get safer for driver and passengers, a greater portion of car-involved deaths are pedestrian deaths. People walk around more in the evening than in the morning (it’s true), and so buying evening light at the expense of morning light is a net gain in pedestrian safety and thus a net reduction in car-caused deaths.

It’s not a large effect, though. During DST, “the net effect on overall fatal crashes is minimal,” concludes the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

So the safety argument for choosing DST over Standard Time is thin.

The argument against permanent DST is probably stronger: Daylight Saving Time in the winter means very late sunrises, which means kids walking to school in the dark.

More than 110,000 students attend public schools in Montgomery County, Texas, to pick a district at random. The school day for elementary school kids starts at 8:15 a.m. In mid-January, sunrise is currently 7:19 a.m. in Conroe, the county’s biggest city.

Were Conroe on permanent DST, sunrise would be 8:19, meaning most elementary school kids would be walking to and waiting for the school bus in the dark in the winter.

The middle schools and high schools in the county start their day at 7:15 am. Astronomical Twilight would be at 6:55 am under permanent DST, meaning children would be going to school in the pitch black.

And the further north you go, the worse it would be.

First, take Waverly, Nebraska, outside of Lincoln. By Thanksgiving, sunrise would be at 8:25 am, after the opening bell of their middle school and most of their elementary schools — and getting later every day. When the students return from Christmas, sunrise would be 8:49, meaning kids are getting to school before even a hint of daylight.

In the Seattle area, sunrise in January would be at 8:57 a.m.

Already too few kids walk to school in the U.S., harming childhood independence, neighborhood cohesion, and parental well-being. Pitch-black opening bells would make it worse.

Most of Florida has only a two-hour difference between its earliest sunrise in July and its latest sunrise (if you don’t count the clock change), while in Seattle, that difference is nearly four hours.

Conclusion

There are plusses and minuses to Daylight Saving Time and to Standard Time. The relative tradeoffs vary by geography: mostly by latitude, but also by longitude within a given time-zone.

It’s not obvious how to weigh these tradeoffs. But that difficulty seems a strong argument against the proposed change, which is all-Daylight Saving, all-year-long, everywhere.

Instead, this should be a matter of state and local control. If the people of Florida really want later sunsets, they could adopt permanent DST, and let the places with more extreme variations in daylight keep the current system.

IT’S TIME TO END DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME (UNTIL NEXT YEAR)

In fact, since Florida is currently split between two time zones (which creates problems on Election Day, among other times), maybe Florida should just shift entirely into the Central Time Zone and stay in permanent Standard Time.

The rest of the country won’t love switching the clocks twice a year, but they’ll enjoy languid summer evenings, and reasonably sunlit school mornings.