I dislike changing time twice a year.
Most others do too. Polls (discussed below) indicate that far more persons in the United States support eliminating the time changes than support keeping them.
I
especially detest in a sense losing an hour of sleep in the spring with the moving ahead
one hour. I support making standard time permanent.
Medical
professionals generally also seem to feel that it is better for our health to
avoid the time change and to keep standard time, as pointed out in an American Medical Association article [1] and other articles.
Eliminating the time required to manually set certain clocks back or ahead (such as the clocks pictured below) is another (though perhaps minor) reason to stop the time changes.
Polls
A January
2025 Gallup poll [2]
found that a majority of persons desired to eliminate the time change. It also
found person preferred standard time over daylight saving time.
An October
2025 AP/NORC poll [3] also found persons preferred eliminating the time change. However, that
poll found more persons preferred daylight saving time to standard time.
My guess is that since the Gallup poll was taken while standard time was in effect and the AP/NORC poll was taken while daylight saving time was in effect, the dates of the surveys biased the results.
Perhaps persons preferred to keep the time then in effect, rather than
changing. But that’s just my guess.
Permanent
Daylight Saving Time Was Unpopular
When daylight
saving time was made permanent year round in the 1970s, numerous complaints
occurred, as noted by an NPR article [4] and numerous other
sources. One problem is that schoolchildren were waiting for buses in the dark.
In Florida “eight schoolchildren were hit by cars in the dark” according to a CNN article [5], as well as a Time article [6]. “Permanent” daylight
saving time did not last long.
Permanent
Standard Time
My view is that permanent standard time will be much more popular than permanent daylight
saving time was. As mentioned earlier medical professionals seem to dislike
both changing time and permanent daylight saving time, citizens prefer avoiding
the time change, and the 1970s experiment with permanent daylight saving time
failed.
Many
sources note that before the 20th century there was no daylight saving time. Standard time was standard. Let's make it that way again.
Federal law allows individual states to keep standard time year round, but it doesn’t allow them to keep daylight saving time year round. If federal legislation isn’t passed to make standard time permanent, individual states can decide to go to permanent standard time.
If numerous states do so, it would put more
pressure on federal legislators to take action. Currently Hawaii and all of
Arizona except the Navajo Nation are on standard time year round, as noted by
numerous sources.
Permanent
standard time will provide more daylight in the morning hours as students are
going to school than daylight saving time. Furthermore, it will still be daylight when the school day ends.
I strongly
advocate Congress passing legislation to make standard time permanent. I’ve
emailed my two Senators and my Representative urging such action. I urge
readers to do so also. Together, I’m confident we can get this change
accomplished.
ENDNOTES:
[1] Smith, Timothy M.; “Sleep doctors’ orders:
Use standard time 365 days a year”; American Medical Association; March 5, 2024;
webpage accessed November 1, 2025; https://www.ama-assn.org/public-health/prevention-wellness/sleep-doctors-orders-use-standard-time-365-days-year
[2] Evans, Mary Claire and Jones, Jeffrey M.; “More Than Half in U.S. Want Daylight Saving Time Sunsetted”; Gallup; March 4, 2025; webpage accessed November 1, 2025; https://news.gallup.com/poll/657584/half-daylight-saving-time-sunsetted.aspx
[3] Hajela, Deepti and Sanders, Linley; “How Americans feel about changing the clocks, according to a new AP-NORC poll”; APNews; updated October 30, 2025; 8:54 a.m.; webpage accessed November 1, 2025; https://apnews.com/article/daylight-saving-time-clocks-back-08069f6389b26db6ee27313f116069cb
[4] Davis, Susan; ”The U.S. tried permanent daylight saving time in the 1970s — then quickly rejected it”; NPR; March 19, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET; webpage accessed November 1, 2025; https://www.npr.org/2022/03/19/1087280464/the-u-s-tried-permanent-daylight-saving-time-in-the-1970s-then-quickly-rejected-
[5] Hetter, Katia and Mays, Stephen; “Daylight saving time is controversial. Here’s why the US kept it”; CNN; updated October 29, 2025, 1:54 p.m.EDT; webpage accessed November 1, 2025; https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/05/health/daylight-saving-time-explainer-wellness
[6] Waxman, Olivia B.; “The U.S. Tried Permanent Daylight Saving Time Before. Here’s What Happened”; Time; March 17, 2022; webpage accessed November 1, 2025; https://time.com/6157915/daylight-saving-time-history/
No comments:
Post a Comment