Permanent DST Would Put 143 Indianapolis Sunrises a Year at 8 A.M. or Later, Up From 53

Clocks across most of the country fell back at 2 a.m. on Sunday, and the House has voted to make that fall-back one of the last: on July 14 it passed the Sunshine Protection Act, 308 to 117, which would make daylight saving time permanent; the bill now sits in the Senate with no vote scheduled. Its safety case lives in the evening commute, when pedestrian deaths cluster; the case against it lives in the morning and the body clock. By our calculation, under permanent daylight saving time, the sun would rise at 8 a.m. or later on 143 days a year in Indianapolis, up from 53, and on 121 in Atlanta, up from almost none.

The Evening Argument

In 2024, according to NHTSA’s pedestrian data, 7,080 pedestrians were killed on American roads, 76 percent of them in the dark; in December, January and February, a third died between 6 and 9 p.m. In midwinter an extra evening hour would light the 5 o’clock commute but leave most of that window dark: the earliest sunsets in our 14 cities would still come between 5:12 and 6:29 p.m.

A 1995 Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study, counting crashes around both sunrise and sunset, estimated that keeping daylight saving time all year from 1987 to 1991 might have avoided 727 fatal crashes involving pedestrians and 174 involving vehicle occupants over those five years. Douglas Coate and Sara Markowitz, using 1998–1999 data, estimated in 2004 that year-round daylight saving time could prevent about 171 pedestrian and 195 occupant deaths a year; their model counts the 5-to-10 a.m. window alongside 4 to 9 p.m., so the 171 appears to net out the darker mornings.

A newer study complicates the tally. Analyzing 2010–2019 crashes around each clock change, the institute found in a 2025 paper that fatal crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists rise 13 percent after the November change and drop 24 percent after the March one, while crashes killing vehicle occupants move the other way. Overall, the institute estimated the switches meant 26 fewer pedestrian and cyclist fatal crashes and 29 more occupant ones. By our reading, that is nearly a wash. The pedestrian drop tracked the hours whose light changed; almost none of the occupant rise did. Its researchers concluded road safety alone does not clearly favor either clock.

What the Morning Costs

Permanent daylight saving time adds no light; it takes the hour from winter mornings. We used NOAA’s solar position algorithm to compute sunrise and sunset for 14 large or time-zone-edge cities in calendar 2027, under current rules (daylight time March 14 to November 7) and with daylight saving time all year.

Sunrise and sunset in calendar 2027, local clock time, under current rules and under permanent daylight saving time. Our calculation with NOAA’s solar algorithm at downtown coordinates, computed for the sun’s upper edge at a 90.833° zenith from unrounded times (so Los Angeles’s 7:59 counts as before 8), with spot checks for Detroit and New York matching published tables within a minute or two; counts near a threshold are fragile: ranges in parentheses mark counts a one-minute error would move by five days or more; every other count moves by four or fewer. “Now” assumes daylight time from March 14 to November 7, 2027. In 2027 every city’s latest sunrise now comes on November 6, the last day of daylight time, while under permanent daylight saving time it comes in January, so those two columns differ by less than an hour; current counts vary slightly by year (over 2026–2033, Indianapolis 53 to 55, Detroit 21 to 28, and Atlanta and Seattle 0 to 2), and permanent-DST counts shift by about a day (Indianapolis 143 to 144). A two-minute error would also move Grand Rapids and Boise now, Miami and Dallas under permanent daylight saving time, and Atlanta at 8:30 by five to eight days. Counts include weekends and holidays.
City	Latest sunrise now (Nov. 6)	Latest sunrise, permanent DST	Days with sunrise at or after 8 a.m. now	Same, permanent DST	Days at or after 8:30 a.m., permanent DST	Earliest sunset now	Earliest sunset, permanent DST
Boise	8:27	9:18	84	149	107	5:08 p.m.	6:08 p.m.
Grand Rapids	8:23	9:14	73	145	102	5:08 p.m.	6:08 p.m.
Indianapolis	8:19	9:06	53 (51–58)	143	97	5:20 p.m.	6:20 p.m.
Detroit	8:11	9:01	26 (18–33)	129	86	5:00 p.m.	6:00 p.m.
Atlanta	8:01	8:43	2	121	60	5:29 p.m.	6:29 p.m.
Seattle	8:01	8:58	1	110	72	4:18 p.m.	5:18 p.m.
Minneapolis	7:58	8:51	0	108	65	4:31 p.m.	5:31 p.m.
Dallas	7:49	8:30	0	98	10 (0–19)	5:21 p.m.	6:21 p.m.
Denver	7:34	8:21	0	71	0	4:35 p.m.	5:35 p.m.
New York	7:32	8:20	0	68	0	4:28 p.m.	5:28 p.m.
Chicago	7:29	8:18	0	63	0	4:19 p.m.	5:19 p.m.
Miami	7:32	8:09	0	56	0	5:29 p.m.	6:29 p.m.
Boston	7:24	8:14	0	53	0	4:12 p.m.	5:12 p.m.
Los Angeles	7:17	7:59	0	0 (0–8)	0	4:43 p.m.	5:43 p.m.

Late sunrises belong to cities on a time zone’s western edge, like Boise, Indianapolis and Atlanta, or far north, like Seattle. Boise would see 62 sunrises at 9 a.m. or later, early December to early February, and Indianapolis 36, mid-December to late January; Indianapolis’s current 53 come in daylight time’s last weeks, late October to early November, and mid-December to late January. Boston, on the eastern side of its zone, would take on 53 sunrises at 8 a.m. or later to push its earliest sunset from 4:12 to 5:12 p.m. In Atlanta the late mornings run from early November to early March, 87 of them weekdays, so an 8 a.m. school bell would ring at or before sunrise on every school day in that stretch.

The country tried it once in peacetime. In January 1974, during the oil crisis, Congress put the nation on year-round daylight saving time; within weeks, according to an account on the State Archives of Florida’s Florida Memory site, several Florida schoolchildren were injured in dark-morning crashes. Support fell, and Congress repealed the change within the year.

What You Can Do

To see your town’s cost, add an hour to its early-January sunrise. Parents in western-edge cities can ask their district what a sunrise near 9 a.m. would mean for bus stops. Cities can light streets, slow traffic and improve crossings on any clock. Anyone writing to a senator has three choices, not two: keep switching, permanent daylight saving time, or permanent standard time, which states can already adopt on their own, as Hawaii and most of Arizona have.

Limitations

Every sourced claim comes from search summaries, not the linked primary pages; the sunrise figures are our calculation; both full-year estimates use 1987–1999 data, when daylight time ran April to October, so their totals include four to five weeks in spring and fall that today’s calendar already shifts, biasing them in an unknown direction. The 2025 study measured the weeks around each switch, not a permanent clock; its summaries disagree on whether the 26 and 29 are annual, and we found no study of year-round daylight saving time on today’s roads. Our sunrise times use downtown coordinates and assume every state keeps the new clock, though reports disagree on whether the bill lets states opt out. Sunrise is not first light: civil twilight begins about half an hour earlier, and sunrise counts measure darkness, not risk; we found no national morning pedestrian-death figure. Florida’s 1974 accounts are anecdotes of injuries, not a rate, and we could not verify reported deaths. Our sleep evidence is a consensus statement. We contacted no one.

The Strongest Case Against This Analysis

Permanent-DST advocates would answer that sunrise counts are not body counts. Both full-year crash estimates count the darker mornings and still project net safety gains. In the 2025 study, they would add, the occupant rise barely tracked the light, which points to the switch, and their clock ends the switch too. School districts can move bell times, and Indiana could change time zones. Permanent standard time would darken the very evenings where the spring switch cut pedestrian crashes.

Sleep scientists press the other way: the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, in a statement about 20 medical, scientific and advocacy groups endorsed, says the United States should adopt permanent standard time, which fits human circadian biology best, and it urged the Senate to reject the House bill. Its case at full strength: daylight saving time itself, not just the switch, puts body clocks out of step with the natural environment, so a permanent version would keep them there all year.

Our numbers refute neither case. They size the morning side, whose cost lands hardest on the western edges of time zones and in the far north, for three and a half to five months a year. Both remedies would end the switch. They would not protect the same people. Permanent daylight saving time keeps evening light and pays for it on winter mornings; permanent standard time keeps November evenings as dark as this week’s and moves every sunset from March to early November an hour earlier.

The Bottom Line

Permanent daylight saving time would light the 5 o’clock commute. Two older estimates projected net safety gains even counting darker mornings, though a 2025 study of the switches does not clearly favor either clock. The price is darker mornings and, sleep scientists warn, body clocks out of step. By our calculation, Indianapolis would get 143 sunrises a year at 8 a.m. or later, up from 53, and Atlanta 121, up from almost none. Senators should weigh those mornings against the evenings the bill would light.