Why Not Permanent Standard Time?
Polling shows that most Americans want to end the clock, and Daylight Saving Time (an extra hour of light at the end of the day) is more popular than Standard Time (an extra hour of light at the start of the day). The Standard Time crowd is vocal and their lobbyists are powerful. Here's what we think they miss:
1. We already live on daylight saving time two-thirds of the year
Daylight saving time runs from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November. That is about 34 weeks out of 52, roughly 65 percent of the year.
So permanent standard time is not a return to normal. It is a change to how most of the year already works. It asks the eight months that currently have late sunsets to give up an hour of evening light in order to match the four months that do not.
Permanent daylight saving time asks the opposite: it extends what we already do most of the year across the rest of it. If you like how July evenings feel, you already like daylight saving time. You have been living on it since March.
2. Evening light reaches more people than morning light
Under permanent standard time, the population- and time-weighted average sunrise would be at 6:06am.
At 6:06 a.m., most people are asleep. Under permanent daylight savings time, it would be a much more reasonable 7:06am.
Meanwhile, at 6:00 p.m., nearly everyone is awake. Kids are at practice. People are commuting home, walking dogs, running errands, getting outside.
An hour of light in the evening is used by almost the entire population. An hour of light at dawn is used by the minority who are awake for it.
Permanent standard time takes light from the hour when everyone is awake and moves it to an hour when most people are not. Permanent daylight saving time does the reverse.
Permanent standard time proponents are asking us to live with ridiculously early sunrises in the summer: e.g. 4:06am in Boston, 4:14am in Chicago, 4:22am in NYC, 4:25am in Minneapolis.
3, Evening Light Saves lives
Multiple studies show that permanent daylight savings time would save hundreds of lives each year compared to permanent standard time, as dark evening commute fatalities would fall.