There is a reason “ditch the switch” has become a rallying cry in Washington and in Albany: nobody enjoys losing an hour of sleep in March or fumbling with clocks in November. But popular annoyance with the biannual time change is not, by itself, a good reason to lock the clocks on daylight saving time year-round. The U.S. House’s overwhelming passage of the Sunshine Protection Act, and companion efforts in the New York Legislature, deserve real scrutiny — not just applause for finally “doing something.”

The instinct behind permanent daylight saving time is understandable. Advocates point to a boost in evening activity, economic upside from more usable daylight after the workday ends, and relief from seasonal mood dips. Those benefits are real, especially in June and July, when the extra evening light lets families linger outdoors after dinner.

But summer is not the season lawmakers should be optimizing for. The real test of any clock policy is what it does in December and January — and on that test, permanent daylight saving time fails badly.

Under year-round daylight saving time, winter sunrise would be pushed roughly an hour later across the country. In parts of the Hudson Valley and much of the Northeast, that means sunrise creeping toward 8 a.m. or later at the darkest point of the year. Given that close to 60% of U.S. workers leave for their jobs before 8 a.m., and that most schools start around the same hour, the practical result is a nation of commuters and schoolchildren moving through pitch darkness every winter morning.

We have already run this experiment — twice — and both times it ended in retreat. President Franklin Roosevelt imposed year-round “War Time” from 1942 to 1945 to conserve energy during World War II. President Richard Nixon tried it again in January 1974 amid the oil crisis. That second attempt is the one worth remembering: dark winter mornings led directly to a spike in traffic accidents and child pedestrian deaths, parents and school officials revolted, and Congress reversed course within the year, restoring standard time by that October. Some readers old enough to have walked to school in that darkness still remember it vividly. Lawmakers pushing today’s Sunshine Protection Act should study why that policy collapsed so quickly the last time it was tried, rather than assume this attempt will go differently.

Notably, the medical and sleep-science communities are not on the side of permanent daylight saving time. The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine — the two professional bodies most directly concerned with how clock policy affects human health — both favor permanent standard time over permanent daylight saving time, precisely because standard time keeps the clock closer aligned with the body’s natural circadian rhythm. Their consensus is worth more than a summer evening’s convenience.

None of this means the current system is beloved. Nobody looks forward to the March time change. But the twice-yearly switch exists for a coherent reason: it uses standard time to keep winter mornings brighter and safer, and shifts to daylight saving time in the summer to capture more usable evening light when darkness is not a safety concern. It is a compromise between two extremes, and compromises are rarely glamorous — but this one has kept schoolchildren out of dark morning streets for decades.

New York lawmakers are right to be examining alternatives — Senate Bill S3380 and Assembly Bill A10571 would move the state toward permanent daylight saving time, while the competing Senate Bill S07982 would opt New York out of daylight saving time entirely, placing it on permanent standard time similar to Arizona. That second approach, notably, does not require congressional approval and would avoid the dark-morning problem altogether. If Albany wants to end the clock changes, permanent standard time — not permanent daylight saving time — is the option consistent with both history and the medical evidence.

Before Congress permanently rewires how 330 million Americans experience winter mornings, it should weigh the judgment of sleep scientists over the appeal of brighter July evenings. The clock switch is inconvenient. Pitch-black school mornings are dangerous. Between the two, the choice should not be close.