On March 8, the good people of British Columbia move their clocks forward one hour and there they will stay. Premier David Eby announced on Monday that British Columbia will adopt a permanent daylight saving time which they are calling “Pacific Time.”
British Columbians will strike a blow for common sense and possibly save some lives. There is a significant spike in pedestrian deaths each fall after the clocks are set back one hour.
It’s basic math. Darkness is more dangerous for pedestrians. A University of Michigan study found that there are 4.1 times as many pedestrian fatalities in darkness as in daylight.
A 2025 study examining fatal crash data from 2010 to 2019 found that pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities in the United States climbed by 13 per cent in the five weeks after the fall time change. The same study found they dropped 24 per cent in the weeks after the spring leap forward. That’s because there is an extra hour of daylight in the late afternoon.
Also, there are more pedestrians walking around in the afternoon than in the morning. After standard time (think: “winter time”) begins in November, the pedestrians walking about in the late afternoon and early evening are doing so in the dark.
More pedestrians plus more darkness equals more injury and death caused by the automobile. In 2009, 36 per cent of the pedestrian deaths of children under 16 occurred between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
According to research of data recorded between 1987 and 1991 published in the American Journal of Public Health, in the 13 weeks leading up to the switch to standard time, the average number of fatal pedestrian crashes in the United States after sunset during daylight saving time was 25 or less. In the 13 weeks after the initiation of standard time, pedestrian fatalities quadrupled to more than 100. Researchers concluded that if daylight saving time had been retained during the period studied, “there would have been a total of 727 fewer fatal pedestrian crashes and 174 fewer crashes fatal to vehicle occupants” over the same period.
So, if switching to standard time endangers pedestrians, why don’t all the provinces adopt daylight saving time permanently?
It’s a good question.
The primary reason is that no one likes getting up in pitch black darkness during the winter. Sunrise in late December this year in Vancouver will be after 9 a.m., which means the entire morning routine including walking kids to school will be done in the dark. Ouch.
Some say the farmers demand it, but this is a myth. Farmers don’t run their lives by digital clocks (animals and crops can’t tell time).
Proponents of daylight saving time reasoned that more light in the evening would save on power usage. Do we still need it for wartime energy conservation as was once the case?
Because most of the United States does; that’s a logical reason, especially considering that crossing the U.S. border just south of Vancouver will mean changing time zones.
So why don’t we all stop changing times?
I can sum it up by recounting a distant memory.
We had assembled to bury my grandfather on a clear Ottawa Valley afternoon in May 1999. I stood by the grave, my four-year-old daughter’s hand in mine. As the casket was lowered into the ground, she tugged on my hand and whispered, “Why can’t we look in the box?”
“Because…” I replied. “We can’t.”
“Because we can’t.”
Has a four-year-old ever given you a look that said, “You’ve got to be kidding me?”
My answer – a well-roasted blend of adult complacency and lack of imagination – in no way satisfied her childlike curiosity and instilled in her a skepticism about adults that deepened as she grew up.
Three magic words. Because we can’t.
Why don’t we all get rid of standard time and adopt daylight saving time permanently? Why don’t all the provinces put their clocks forward on Sunday morning and keep them there? Why don’t we save pedestrians lives?
Because we (most of Canada) can’t ... yet anyways. But British Columbia is doing it and other countries have as well so we obviously can, we just won’t.
There must be a better way.
I’m no scientist. As I have admitted in previous columns, I have the scientific and technological understanding equivalent to someone who lived in the ninth century. Here, my lack of acumen might be a strength.
If none of us like getting up when it’s dark, what if we all agreed to get up later when it’s light?
If we don’t want children walking to school when it’s dark, why don’t we start school later during the winter? Researchers studied the effect of a 50-minute delay (7:20 a.m. to 8:10 am) in high school start times in Fairfax County, Va. The results suggest “that school start time delay is associated with decreased adolescent motor vehicle crash risk, with significant implications for public health and safety.”
And while we are at it, why don’t we encourage them to wear reflective clothing, as they do in Finland, Norway and other Nordic countries? We make them wear seatbelts.
“These countries have laws that require pedestrians to wear reflective clothing in areas where visibility is poor,” says Daniel Stern, a Vancouver-based lighting consultant and chief editor of Driving Vision News. “That’ll never happen in North America because it’s incompatible with our culture.”
And, while I’m at it, what’s all this time stuff? Isn’t all we have the present? Didn’t Einstein’s relativity show that time isn’t fixed or universal? It is not that we have little time, it’s that we waste a great deal of it.
This Sunday, I’m throwing out my clocks and investing in a sundial. I’m going to divide days into daylight and darkness and avoid work during both periods.
I’ll call it “Road Sage Time.”