If We Make Daylight Saving Permanent, Will Children Be In Danger? Probably Not

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If we make daylight saving time permanent, will we put children in danger?

People are understandably worried about this. They envision children going to school in the dark, and terrible things happening as a result. It’s a scary scenario. But I did the research, and here’s my report:

We may not have much to worry about at all.

A Time-Sensitive Debate

Some quick context: As you may know, the Senate recently unanimously passed a bill to make daylight saving time permanent. (Daylight saving is when we “spring forward”; it’s what we just did on March 13. The alternate to daylight saving is called “standard time,” which is what we are scheduled to revert to in November.)

I wrote about this in my newsletter last week, where I offered eight reasons to make daylight saving permanent. I had no idea how touchy this subject is — my piece was read more than 100,000 times, and I received dozens of emails, some of them very angry, and most of them raising the fear of children commuting in the dark.

Here's a typical email I got:

Think of the walkers, bike riders, and kids who get themselves to school in the dark. Would you want your child out in the dark? You wouldn't know if something happened to him till after school when he didn't come home.

This concern is echoed across the country, and often comes up during these kinds of debates. For example, when Florida was considering a change to permanent daylight saving time in 2018, the local ABC affiliate ran this headline:

I’m very confused by this worry. After all, I have two small children. I take them to or from school every day. If our current system enabled them to commute both ways in daylight, that would be wonderful. But that is not the case. During the winter months, I already pick them up in absolute darkness.

What exactly are people trying to protect here?

“You know, you are right,” the reader emailed me, when I explained this. “I hadn't thought of that. I really don't know the answer.”

Clearly, this person does not have children who are going to and from school every day. It made me think about this recent New York Times report about Americans’ opinions about our school system, which revealed an intriguing divide: Parents of school-age children are largely positive about our schools, and Gallup polling found that “the people who seem to be driving the negative feelings toward American schools do not have children attending them.”

But our children’s safety deserves more than conjecture. So what does the research say?

Looking At the Data

My team and I asked around yesterday, looking for data-driven insights about child safety — or at least something that would confirm people’s concerns.

“I am honestly a bit perplexed myself,” says Charlie Klauer, an associate professor at Virginia Tech Transportation Institute’s Division of Vehicle, Driver & System Safety. “I do believe that the switch from standard to daylight savings time does improve our overall amount of daylight, but as you travel north, there is less forgiveness there. For example, I grew up in the northern corner of South Dakota, and I distinctly remember walking to school in darkness and coming home at dusk (at 3:30pm).”

This is a good point — no matter how we set our clocks, people’s experiences across the vast United States will vary. Let me stress it again: People seem worried about creating a situation in which children go to school in the dark, but that’s already the situation we have! It is impossible to create a system in which all children, in all parts of the country, always go to and from school in daylight.

Is this a problem? Maybe research can clear this up.

“The data is a little messy,” cautions Matt Camden, a senior research associate at Virginia Tech Transportation Institute’s Division of Freight, Transit & Heavy Vehicle Safety.

He says that the existing research largely focuses not on long-term effects, but rather just on what happens in the weeks following when we change our clocks. “This makes it hard to figure out if any changes are related to a change in time — moving the clocks forward or backward — versus just changes in lighting,” he says. After all, it’s well documented that clock changes mess with our body’s internal clock and increases our fatigue.

To explain, he pointed to a few studies:

One study, published in 2006 in the Journal of the Transportation Research Board, looked at how daylight savings time impacted road safety in Texas. The result: “The number of fatal pedestrian crashes decreased when the change to [daylight saving time] occurred, although it was found not to be statistically significant.”

Another study, published in 2007 in the B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, found that daylight saving time “has no significant detrimental effect on automobile crashes in the short run.”

Another study, published in 2010 in the Journal of Safety Research, researched what happened in Minnesota after the switch to daylight saving time. It found that the impact on car crashes was “not statistically significant.”

Yet another study, this one conducted by researchers at the National University of Ireland Galway, looked at the impact of time shifts in the U.K. It found a small decline in crashes that correspond to a daylight-saving shift, but “this cannot be attributed solely to DST, as a range of road collision risk factors vary over time.”

Meanwhile, a report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety concludes that a permanent shift to daylight saving "could help prevent pedestrian deaths and injuries."

News reports might have you concerned about walking in darkness. For example, here's a story published in 2010 by NBC News, which highlighted a much-cited study by Carnegie Mellon:

That story was about what happens when the clocks are turned backward to standard time. The numbers sound rightly scary — pedestrians are nearly three times as likely to be struck and killed when the sun goes down!? But dig in, and you'll see an important caveat: "It's not the darkness itself, but the adjustment to earlier nighttime that's the killer, said professors Paul Fischbeck and David Gerard, both of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh."

So, What Have We Learned?

In summary, here’s what we seem to be looking at:

• People are understandably concerned about how a permanent shift in time will impact child safety.

• However, those people seem to be comparing the change to an imaginary and unrealistic system in which children are always commuting in sunlight.

• Nobody seems to have researched this question exactly, but they have researched the impact that daylight saving time has on traffic accidents — and there is no clear pattern of danger.

• If anything, the research finds a slight increase in safety due to daylight saving — and a decrease in safety due to changing the clocks twice a year.

To be clear: More research is always a good thing, and I'd love if someone took a close look at the specific issue of children commuting in darkness.

But speaking as a parent of two, I will say this: I am not newly concerned about sending my children to school in the dark, because I already do exactly that. But I would welcome the elimination of clock changes, which my children struggle to adjust to.

As I wrote last week, we need to become more comfortable reconsidering the impossible. Let us engage with ideas that once seemed crazy! Let us look outside our narrow band of comfort! There’s a whole world of ideas out there — all we have to do is look beyond our own.

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Cover credit: Getty Images / Cavan Images