Cars today bigger peril to kids on Halloween

A Washington Post analysis found that on average, 54 pedestrians younger than 18 were struck and killed by an automobile on Halloween from 2004 through 2018, compared with 16 on a typical day.

In absolute terms, the likelihood of a child being killed by a car on Halloween is still extremely low, given the hundreds of millions of trick-or-treaters who went out during the time period analyzed. But the holiday nonetheless stands out sharply when charted against every other day.

Roads have also become more dangerous for pedestrians in the past decade. In fact, more pedestrians and cyclists were fatally struck by cars in 2018 than any other year since 1990, federal highway authorities recently warned.

A study released earlier this year in JAMA Pediatrics found that children ages 4 to 8 were about 10 times more likely to be killed in the evening on Halloween than they were during other autumn evenings. The study found that the 6 p.m. hour — a confluence of rush hour and sunset in many parts of the country — was the deadliest time for trick-or-treaters to be on the road.

While Halloween safety tips tend to focus on the behavior of individual trick-or-treaters, the authors of the JAMA Pediatrics study emphasize instead the importance of better highway policy and construction. Halloween pedestrian deaths “highlight deficiencies of the built environment (e.g., lack of sidewalks, unsafe street crossings), shortcomings in public policy (e.g., insufficient space for play), and failures in traffic control (e.g., excessive speed),” they write.