Overview
- A University of Washington study published October 29 estimates at least 2 billion additional trips to school before sunrise if the United States adopted year‑round daylight saving time and finds fatal crashes involving school‑aged pedestrians are about twice as likely in dark mornings.
- Most of the country returned to standard time on November 1 because the Senate has not advanced the Sunshine Protection Act that the House approved on July 14, leaving the federal change stalled and state proposals unresolved.
- Sleep and circadian experts say losing morning light under permanent DST would harm children’s sleep and daily rhythms because early bright light is needed to set the body’s internal clock.
- Nineteen states have passed measures favoring year‑round DST but those laws cannot take effect without Congress, creating a risk of a patchwork of time rules and unequal safety and scheduling impacts across regions.
- Possible responses include delaying school start times or keeping seasonal clock changes, but researchers warn later school hours would shift work and family schedules and that the policy tradeoffs reach public health, safety, commerce and equity; daylight saving itself began as a World War I fuel measure and the Uniform Time Act of 1966 later standardized the twice‑annual clock change.