On Tuesday, the US Senate passed a rare unanimous vote on a bill that could have drastic technology and transportation implications: permanent daylight saving time (DST) compliance all year round.
The one page ‘Sunshine Protection Act’ co-sponsored by Sens. Marc Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (DR.I.), has now been approved for a vote in the House of Representatives after unanimously passed his consent in the Senate. This bill, originally introduced in 2018 and reintroduced in 2021, would reverse the Calder Act’s enactment of a twice-yearly clock-changing process in 1918, along with its eventual reinforcement by the Uniform Time Act of 1966.
The result would leave clocks and timetables permanently in the “spring forward” state of daylight saving time beginning in 2023, with the exception of states that had previously established specific time-change rules based on things like different time zones in the same state. As for US politics, it’s unclear whether either major US party will face serious opposition in the House to the eventual vote there — and President Joe Biden has yet to state his stance on the bill.
Why it started, what it does (and doesn’t) save
The US adopted daylight saving time after a wave of European countries, most notably Germany and Austria, embraced the practice in 1916 as a means of conserving energy during World War I. But daylight saving time in the US has been historically inconsistent, even after the Uniform Time Act in 1966. Later laws updated the exact time frame at which “standard” and “saving” time changes would occur.
In the decades since, populations around the world have vociferously debated the practice, and it wasn’t until 2019 that the European Union was on the brink of abolishing DST altogether, thanks to a successful vote in its parliament. However, the original goal of ending DST in 2021 required cooperation from EU committees, who instead favored the time change process in favor of coronavirus responses and the fallout from Brexit. Whether, when and how the EU’s vote for dumping DST will play out is all unclear.
DST’s originally stated goal of saving energy based on how much sunlight is available in a given season has proved inapplicable to a modern, electricity-powered world, based on data collected from energy companies in 2007 after the United States had extended daylight saving time by three weeks. The U.S. Department of Energy followed that up in 2008 with an estimate of 0.03 percent energy savings per year when daylight saving time was extended by three weeks.
Many studies have examined how car accidents would change if the United States were to freeze all clock changes, and a 2004 study by the U.S. National Institute of Health concluded that the end of Daylight Savings Time would result in a statistically significant reduction in the number of deaths for both car passengers and bystanders.
Probably not another Y2K
When the US changed its daylight saving time calendar in 2007, the results didn’t wreak Y2K-esque havoc as some feared. But that change came at a time when both consumer and business computers were less likely to have a permanent online connection — and thus received constant updates ranging from security databases to full OS updates. At the time, Ars reminded macOS readers what hoops they might have to jump through to ensure their systems would update automatically in line with US Daylight Savings Time adjustments.
The 2007 shift is still a footnote recent enough to refer to when considering what changes may be needed to align the US’s many calendar-based systems, especially an internationally relevant tangle of transportation networks, with a permanent daylight saving time universe.
And then there’s the science-backed consideration of not losing up to a week a year adjusting our own biological clocks to match a significant bump in our alarms, commuting, carpooling to and from school, and much more. Lake. This arguably drives the loudest and most persistent protests from populations around the world to drop the practice once and for all.
