Senate Votes Return to Standard Time For Four Months and Sends Bill to Ford (original) (raw)
Senate Votes Return to Standard Time For Four Months and Sends Bill to Ford
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- Oct. 1, 1974
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WASHINGTON, Sept. 30—The Senate agreed today by voice vote to end year‐round daylight saving time and put the nation back on standard time for four months.
The House had already approved the measure Aug. 19 by a 383‐to‐16 vote and today's action sends the bill to President Ford for an expected signature.
Clocks in all but a few sections of the country are to be set back one hour on Sunday, Oct. 27, to standard time. Then, on Sunday, Feb. 23, daylight saving time will be resumed.
In the midst of last year's fuel crisis, Congress passed the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act and set the nation on year‐round daylight saving time, as a two‐year experiment. Previously, daylight time had been observed six months in the year.
The experiment, however, ran afoul of public opinion—parents became concerned about traffic accidents involving their children, who were going to school in the predawn darkness on winter mornings.
The Department of Transportation was charged with studying the experiment and reporting to Congress. Its study indicated an energy savings of 0.4 per cent to 1.5 per cent but no clear picture emerged on traffic accidents.
However, as one Senate aide put it, “some of the hypothetical models showed some slight tendencies” toward an increased traffic problem.
One House staff member commented, “There seemed to be some indication that there were more deaths and everyone got a little nervous.”
A study on public acceptance of daylight saving time was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago and showed that 79 per cent of those interviewed last December favored the daylight time move. This total dropped to 42 per cent in February.
Before the emergency act, the normal daylight saving schedule was from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October.
Eastern Indiana, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa all are one year‐round standard time and wll not be affected by the move.
The Senate Commerce Committee estimated that the nation saved 100,300 barrels of oil daily in the January through April period by use of daylight saving time. It also noted “a majority of the public's distaste” for daylight time during the darkest and coldest winter months.
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