How Unsafe is Halloween for Pedestrians?

Lots of data to ponder

Halloween
Halloween brings to mind some alarming numbers.
Ehud Neuhaus/Unsplash

Holidays can bring with them plenty of opportunities for human connection and celebration. But, depending on your chosen mode of transportation, holidays can also be dangerous. The likes of Thanksgiving and Memorial Day can be hazardous times to be on the roads — put someone who’s celebrated a little too much behind the wheel or a car or truck, and you have an alarming situation on your hands.

But being on the roads during a holiday isn’t the only danger you can be in during a certain time of the year. Halloween, for instance, is an especially dangerous time to be a pedestrian. A new article by Byron Hurd at Autoblog looks at a new study of pedestrian deaths on holidays — one which has ominous implications for Halloween planning.

The study comes from Chris Tepedino at AutoInsurance.org, and one of its takeaways is especially worrying: “Pedestrians have a 50% higher chance of dying on Halloween than on the average day.” The study goes on to look at statistics relating to accidents on Halloween depending on which day of the week the holiday falls.

Of the 10 deadliest Halloweens from the last 25 years, Tepedino writes, “just two of them fall on a weekend and none of them are on a Saturday.” There’s a lot of data to mull over here, including some related to the argument for moving Halloween celebrations to Saturdays in perpetuity. Though as Hurd points out at Autoblog, recommendations based on the data can be interpreted in a few different ways — and the safest options for drivers and for pedestrians are not always the same ones.

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