Brighter evenings, darker school mornings: Permanent daylight saving time could put children's safety at risk

Brighter evenings, darker school mornings: Permanent daylight saving time could put children's safety at risk Swati Mestri Scientific Editor Robert Egan Senior Editor In July 2026, the U.S. House passed legislation to make daylight saving time (DST) permanent. But a new analysis of the consequences of the Sunshine Protection Act, reported in the journal Current Biology on Oct. 29, finds that this legislation would have serious safety consequences for millions of schoolchildren across the U.S. They would have to leave for school before sunrise, when fatal crashes involving pedestrians are more likely, for much of the school year. Permanent DST would lead to more than 2 billion pre-sunrise commutes for children, and students who walk or take the bus to school would face an increased risk of early-morning crashes. "Permanent DST would move the school day earlier relative to the sun without changing a single bell schedule, putting millions of children on streets and at bus stops in the dark for weeks or months every year," says Horacio de la Iglesia of the University of Washington in Seattle. The overlooked risks of dark mornings Much of the public debate around permanent DST has focused on the light available during the evening. But the researchers say that mornings are a critical time for schoolchildren, who would generally return home during daylight hours under any clock policy. The de la Iglesia lab has long studied the way school start times affect adolescent sleep, including the move in Seattle and many other school districts to later secondary school start times. When the U.S. House passed the Sunshine Protection Act in July 2026, the team realized that no one had investigated how many children would be sent to school in the dark under the new policy. "The U.S. has tried this before," says Guadalupe Rodríguez Ferrante, also at the University of Washington in Seattle. Year-round DST took effect in January 1974 and was abandoned that October, in part because of public concern over dark winter mornings and children traveling to school. "All of today's students, and most of today's parents, have never lived through a winter on DST, so experience with the current seasonal system does not tell us what permanent DST would be like." Billions of school commutes before sunrise The researchers gathered school start times in 14 states along with local sunrise times to assess permanent DST. They counted the number of pre-sunrise commutes in each location and found that there would be about 356 million more pre-sunrise school commutes with the move to permanent DST. When they broadened their approach beyond these states to the entire U.S., they found that the Sunshine Protection Act would lead to more than 2 billion dark morning commutes for children. They also found that students in both northern and southern states would be affected, and Georgia had the highest number of pre-sunrise school commutes of all states analyzed. The team then analyzed fatal crash records in the U.S. over a decade and found greater odds of crashes involving pedestrians on dark mornings. Among fatal morning crashes, those involving pedestrians ages 5 to 18 were more likely when it was dark. The data suggest that permanent DST would put more children at an increased risk of early-morning crashes, say the researchers. Standard time offers safer school mornings "The burden of permanent DST is likely greatest for children who walk, wait for buses or arrive early for school breakfast programs, which disproportionately serve lower-income families," says Ferrante. The current U.S. system of shifting the clocks forward and back also doubles the number of dark school mornings compared with permanent standard time (ST). Permanent ST is not only safer for children going to school, the researchers say; it also keeps students' solar, biological and social clocks best aligned, according to the team's past research. "The name 'Sunshine Protection Act' is misleading," says de la Iglesia. "No clock policy adds a single minute of daylight. It only changes when that daylight is available, and permanent DST moves an hour of light out of the morning, when children travel to school, and into the evening." Publication details Over a Billion More Dark Morning School Commutes for K-12 Children under the Sunshine Protection Act, Current Biology (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.10.014. www.cell.com/current-biology/f … 0960-9822(26)01348-5 Journal information: Current Biology Provided by Cell Press