US House Passes Bill to Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent
US House of Representatives takes step to make daylight saving time permanent
The US House of Representatives has voted to pass the Sunshine Protection Act, ending the twice-yearly clock changes. With strong bipartisan support, the bill aims to keep the country on daylight saving time year-round. While President Donald Trump has championed the move, the legislation now faces an uncertain future in the Senate. Critics warn that permanent daylight saving time could lead to darker winter mornings, potentially affecting safety and health.
It's time that people can stop worrying about the 'Clock,' not to mention all of the work and money that is spent on this ridiculous, twice yearly production.
- jcranmer
Permanent DST sounds good to a lot of people, until they actually experience it. The US went on permanent DST in the 1970s and support plummeted after the first winter in DST (which is why we're not on it anymore). Of course, since it was 50 years ago, that means most people alive in the US don't remember the days of permanent DST.
The problem, I think, is that what a lot of people want is they want the sun to set quite late, like it does in summer time. But DST isn't going to give you those long summer afternoons in winter, because the sun just isn't up long enough; and the trade-off you'd make for maybe coming off work into the start of dusk is that dawn would start after you start working, which turns out to be pretty bad for your circadian rhythm.
- bsimpson
Glad to see progress made on this.
In my 20s, I strongly considered taking some time off to create and drive petitions across the Pacific states to put us all on permanent PDT (matching Arizona). In my research, I saw it would take an act of Congress to make that happen, so I stood down.
- Georgelemental
Boo, hiss. Permanent Standard Time is better in every way https://savestandardtime.com/
- water-data-dude
The only time the Sunshine Protection Act has passed the senate was when gosh danged Tom Cotton wasn't there[0]. I swear, he's in the pocket of Big Time[1].
[0]https://www.mediaite.com/politics/that-daylight-saving-time-...
[1]https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/speeches/floor-speech-on-...
- throw0101d
Perhaps worth noting that most medical and sleep/circadian research folks want permanent standard time:
* https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-cal...
* https://www.labmanager.com/new-position-statement-supports-p...
* http://www.chronobiology.ch/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/JBR-D...
* https://www.chronobiology.com/impact-daylight-saving-time-ci...
* https://esrs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commiss...
* https://www.chronobiocanada.com/official-statements
* https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/
* https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10476036/
* https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dq2nv3/
> The authors take the position that, based on comparisons of large populations living in DST or ST or on western versus eastern edges of time zones, the advantages of permanent ST outweigh switching to DST annually or permanently. Four peer reviewers provided expert critiques of the initial submission, and the SRBR Executive Board approved the revised manuscript as a Position Paper to help educate the public in their evaluation of current legislative actions to end DST. […] The choice of DST is political and therefore can be changed. If we want to improve human health, we should not fight against our body clock, and therefore, we should abandon DST and return to Standard Time (which is when the sun clock time most closely matches the social clock time) throughout the year. This solution would fix both the acute and the chronic probl […]
- BeetleB
> and put the US under time currently observed between March and November - known as permanent standard time.
Was that a typo?
- johnohara
In the upper midwest, daylight savings time generally gives way to tractor-mounted LED time as contracted harvesting companies switch into high production to beat the late-fall rain.
- damnesian
Studies have been conducted about the safety of sticking to one time. The ones who are the most vulnerable are kids waiting for buses in the dark. We can't move to dynamic school times because we are still working the same paradigm as the industrial revolution- same schedule every day, year in year out. And society is simply too divided and fractured, and the motives too hidden and craven, to decide to move en masse to a dynamic schedule.