At first glance it looks terrible, but I think there's more to the story than "Halloween is dangerous for kids". This would be like saying more kids die in skiing accidents between Oct-Mar than Apr-Sept. It looks like about 2.5 times as many kids are killed on Halloween than any other day of the year, but from my experience there are far far more than 2.5 times as many kids out walking around. I'd say 10-20 times as many kids easily. I'd suspect that any given child on Halloween has a far less chance of being killed than any other given day specifically because people are watching out, only the increase of awareness doesn't make up for the increase in pedestrians. That's why we talk about accidents per 100k miles with drivers, to normalize the data. I'd suspect the data is naturally pretty normalized except for one day a year (Halloween).
SSChicken t1_iund1l0 wrote
Reply to US Child Pedestrian Deaths by Day of the Year: 2006-2020 [OC] by rosetechnology
At first glance it looks terrible, but I think there's more to the story than "Halloween is dangerous for kids". This would be like saying more kids die in skiing accidents between Oct-Mar than Apr-Sept. It looks like about 2.5 times as many kids are killed on Halloween than any other day of the year, but from my experience there are far far more than 2.5 times as many kids out walking around. I'd say 10-20 times as many kids easily. I'd suspect that any given child on Halloween has a far less chance of being killed than any other given day specifically because people are watching out, only the increase of awareness doesn't make up for the increase in pedestrians. That's why we talk about accidents per 100k miles with drivers, to normalize the data. I'd suspect the data is naturally pretty normalized except for one day a year (Halloween).