I’ve found that whether changing our clocks twice a year is a good thing or bad thing, and whether it would be best to make daylight saving time or standard time permanent, are subjects that arouse more extreme opinionating in a group than religion or politics.
Almost everyone has a firmly held view on this. Mine is that daylight saving time should be made permanent, as I’ve argued in these previous blog posts:
Making daylight saving time permanent is a must, Congress
Daylight saving time should be permanent — no more “fall back” time change
Let’s make daylight saving time permanent, in Oregon and everywhere
My personal reason for favoring daylight saving time is that my wife and I, being retired, stay up late and we get up late. So having more light in the late afternoon and early evening is a big plus for us. I walk our dog at that time most days. In winter months I have to go on the dog walk earlier than I’d like because it gets dark so damn early.
But I understand that there are lots of morning people who prefer more light at that time of day. So I was enthused to come across an opinion piece in the New York Times today by a wildlife biologist in Washington state that makes some great arguments for permanent daylight saving time that are based on solid research, rather than personal opinion.
The gist of her findings is that deer are struck by cars much more often during standard time. Moving to permanent daylight saving time would save 100 human lives, 6,000 human injuries, and at least $3.5 billion in costs every year by preventing deer-vehicle collisions alone. Add in other kinds of fatal pedestrian and vehicle accidents, and permanent daylight saving time would save about 1,000 human lives a year.
Here’s excerpts from “Switching the Clocks Twice a Year Isn’t Just Annoying. It’s Deadly” by Laura Prugh.
Polling shows that more than half of Americans want to ditch the switch and prefer daylight saving over standard time by a margin of 10 to 20 points. But making that switch permanent would require an act of Congress, and while the Senate managed to pass a bill called the Sunshine Protection Act two years ago, the legislation never made it through the House. Worryingly, state legislators from Maine to the West Coast are now so fed up with waiting that they have introduced their own bills to remain on standard time permanently; states can do that without Congress.
But such a switch would be a mistake. It’s not just that our afternoons and evenings would be shrouded in more darkness, which often comes with higher crime, more vehicle collisions and fewer opportunities to enjoy the outdoors after work or school. There’s another problem with standard time, and it’s gone all but unnoticed until now. Last year, my research team showed that standard time leads to far more vehicles colliding with deer.
Vehicle strikes already kill millions of wild animals each year, and collisions with deer are the best documented because they are so common and damaging. When we looked at over one million collisions between deer and vehicles in 23 states across the United States from 1994 to 2021, we found these collisions are 14 times as likely in the two hours after sunset, compared with the two hours before. Deer behavior does not quite explain this, since they are equally active at dawn and dusk. But traffic volumes are higher in the evening, and it’s hard for us to see things in the dark. The hour-earlier sunset that comes with standard time is thus an expensive, traumatic way to control the deer population.
In all, we found that staying on daylight saving time year-round would prevent an estimated 36,550 collisions between deer and vehicles, whereas staying on standard time would add 73,660 of these collisions every year — a difference of more than 100,000. The human toll of staying on standard time would also be significant: Compared with year-round daylight saving time, year-round standard time would cause 100 more deaths, 6,000 more injuries and at least $3.5 billion in costs every year through increased deer-vehicle collisions alone.
Of course, having more crashes with deer is far from the only cost of standard time. The number of fatal traffic accidents at night — caused by deer or anything else — is three times as high as it is during the day, and in the dark the risk of pedestrian accidents is up to seven times as high. Permanent daylight saving time would prevent 366 fatal pedestrian and vehicle accidents a year with the help of brighter evenings during the four and a half months of the year we currently spend on standard time. Conversely, staying on standard time for an extra 7.5 months each year would add about 610 fatalities — a difference of nearly 1,000 human lives.
…Every year, we gripe about the time switch, demand action and then return to our daily lives. But the toll on people and wildlife is too large to do this year after year. And the longer Congress waits, the greater the risk of state bills for permanent standard time passing, making things worse instead of better. It’s time to spring forward permanently and enjoy the benefits of brighter evenings year-round.
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