SAFETY ADVICE
Atlanta-based Safe Kids Georgia and Children’s Healthcare offer the following tips for Halloween:
- Avoid costumes with excessive flowing fabric, such as capes or sleeves. Loose clothing can easily brush up against a jack-o'-lantern or other open flame, causing your child's costume to catch on fire. Oversized costumes can cause your children to trip and fall.
- If possible, choose a brightly colored costume that drivers can spot easily. If not, decorate the costume with reflective tape and stickers. Glow sticks and flashlights are also good accessories to help trick-or-treaters be visible in the dark.
- Choose face paint and makeup whenever possible instead of masks, which can obstruct a child's vision. Apply face paint or cosmetics directly to the face. (If a mask is worn, be certain it fits securely and cut the eye holes large enough for full vision.)
- Always supervise children under the age of 13. Older children should trick-or-treat in a group, and a curfew should be established for them. Older kids should go in a group — never alone. Create a route ahead of time for all to follow.
- Walk slowly. Be mindful about cars that are on the road, making eye contact with drivers. Always walk on sidewalks and cross at crosswalks, traffic signals. If there are no sidewalks, then walk facing traffic and way to the left.
- Tell your child to go only to well-lit houses and remain on the porch within street view. Teach your child to cross the street only at crosswalks or intersections. Make sure your child understands never to cross between parked cars and to always look both ways before crossing. Remind your child to stay on the sidewalk, if possible, and to walk facing traffic.
- Drivers should back out slowly, keeping a watchful eye on children and knowing that high times for trick-or-treating is 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. No distracted driving.
If this is like previous Halloweens, the emergency room at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta will treat children for cuts and banged heads from falls, or even worse, those struck by cars.
In fact, children are twice as likely to be hit by a car and killed on Halloween than on any other day of the year, according to Safe Kids Worldwide, a global organization committed to prevent accidental childhood injury. One metro Atlanta neighborhood was concerned enough to get a road in its area closed for a few hours for trick-or-treaters.
Halloween is a particularly deadly night because of the high number of drunken drivers on the roads mixed with the increased number of people on foot. In fact, from 2007 to 2011, 23 percent of pedestrian fatalities on Halloween night involved a drunken driver, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Experts say Halloween is fraught with safety hazards — everything from benign tummy aches to tripping over costumes or on poorly lit sidewalks to falling to getting hit by cars. They say planning ahead and remaining vigilant are the keys to a safe holiday.
“This is a night we have to be more mindful of safety and protecting our kids — from constant supervision to planning your route to taking your cellphones and flashlights,” said Beverly Losman, program manager of injury prevention at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and director of Safe Kids Georgia. “It’s also important to be safety-conscious with costumes — reflective tape costs pennies at a hardware store. If your child has a sword, don’t go with a pointed one that could hurt someone.”
In one Decatur neighborhood, neighbors banded together to close a street highly concentrated with cars — and trick-or-treaters — but no sidewalks. The neighborhood associated applied in 2013 to close the street for a few hours beginning at 5:30 p.m., and it was approved by Decatur police. Fliers were distributed to alert people about the closure of the family-friendly neighborhood, which fills up with trick-or-treaters on foot from the neighborhood — but is also inundated by families living outside the area.
“Our neighborhood has become more and more desirable,” said Tom Atkinson, a member of the neighborhood association. “And some people come from outside — Halloween tourists — and they will drive down the middle of the streets and let their kids out of the car.”
Atkinson said while it’s the first time he knows of that the neighborhood has asked for special permission to close a street on Halloween night, the association may consider expanding the closure in future years.
On Halloween night, Atkinson and his wife planned to take turns trick-or-treating with their sons, ages 5 and 8. One will accompany their children knocking on doors. The other will stay home to dish out candy. When Atkinson first moved to the neighborhood in 2002, he and his wife doled out three big bags of candy. This year, they expect to go through six bags.
He arms his kids (who will dress up in colorful body suits this year for Halloween) with glow sticks to help them be seen in darkness. But that’s just part of the hypervigilance.
“I am going to be — obnoxiously — in the middle of the streets and making sure cars come to a complete stop, and they can only inch around me,” he said. “And I will watch my kids like a hawk.”
The NHTSA urges people who may drink alcohol to designate a sober driver and plan a way to safely get home.
