Today’s daylight saving time (DST) system — spring-to-fall DST followed by winter standard time — is an excellent compromise, providing DST’s many advantages the majority of the year and yet avoiding winter standard time’s difficulties during the dark, cold months.
One proposed alternative is year-round standard time. This would cut short 240 beautiful spring, summer and autumn evenings and eliminate eight months of daylight saving time’s benefits.
Numerous studies show that spring-to-fall DST increases public health and the quality of life by getting people outdoors more, reduces crimes like mugging, reduces energy usage and minimizes energy peaks. And note that while there may be some effect on traffic accidents the first day or so after the DST time change, all studies show that traffic accidents and fatalities reduce significantly over the 240 days of DST.
