In December 1973, within the midst of an power disaster, President Richard Nixon signed into legislation a invoice that may make daylight saving time everlasting for 2 years, starting Jan. 1, 1974.
Folks hated it. They didn’t just like the 8:30 a.m. dawn for the overwhelming majority of People. They usually have been appalled on the early experiences from Florida of eight kids hit and killed by automobiles whereas heading to high school at nighttime.
By February, even the co-author of the invoice, Rep. William Ketchum, R-Calif., was having second ideas. “The time to confess a mistake is while you’ve made one,” Ketchum advised the New York Instances.
A NORC Heart for Public Affairs Analysis ballot in December 1973 confirmed 79% % of People accepted making daylight saving time everlasting. Three months after it turned legislation, approval had plummeted to 42%.
Nixon resigned in August within the wake of the Watergate investigation. In September, Congress despatched President Gerald Ford a invoice repealing the legislation, and on Oct. 27, People rolled again their clocks.
But Congress appears to have forgot that arduous lesson. The Senate final week handed laws that may make daylight saving time everlasting beginning in 2023, ending the twice-annual altering of the clocks. The Home would nonetheless need to go the invoice, and President Biden must signal it earlier than it might grow to be legislation. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., calls it “an thought whose time has come.”
California voters already endorsed the idea once they handed Proposition 7 in 2018. Supporters then, as they do now, argue that it might create extra financial exercise if folks have extra daylight within the late afternoon and night. In addition they say People would tremendously want not having to set their clocks forward within the spring and again within the fall.
The 1974 experiment says in any other case.
Contemplate California, the place 6 million kids attend Okay-12 faculties. Research present that 35% of schoolchildren nonetheless make their very own method to college each morning. If everlasting daylight saving time turns into legislation, they are going to be strolling or biking to high school at nighttime for 3 months yearly. On Feb. 1, 2023, for instance, within the Bay Space, dawn can be about 8:11 a.m. as an alternative of seven:11 a.m.
It’s a major concern. The Nationwide Freeway Site visitors Security Administration experiences that 70% of all deadly pedestrian accidents happen when its darkish. The company additionally says that 20% of[ pedestrians killed in site visitors crashes are kids youthful than 15.
Defending kids is mother and father’ highest precedence. That ought to go double for Congress. The Home ought to cease placing kids’s lives at higher danger and kill the invoice to make daylight saving time everlasting.