Halloween is still the deadliest evening for children on foot
In fifty years of American crash records no evening kills more young pedestrians. But the number who die on it has fallen by four-fifths
On one evening a year American children go from door to door after dark, often in costumes, crossing streets lined with parked cars. The country's federal register of fatal crashes, kept since 1975, records every death on a public road with its date, its hour and the age of the person killed. We counted the pedestrians aged 4 to 17 killed between 5pm and midnight on every evening of the year.
Halloween comes first. Over fifty years, 172 children died on foot on that evening. The median evening of the year has 45. The next worst, the Fourth of July, has 96.
Ten times the risk
The danger is not new. In 2018 three researchers, John Staples, Candace Yip and Donald Redelmeier, compared Halloween with the evenings a week before and a week after, which fall on the same day of the week, for 1975-2016. They found 43% more pedestrian deaths, and ten times as many among children aged 4 to 8. Counting the register's records the same way, we get the same figures: 1.43 and 10.0.
The deaths are packed into a few hours. Three in four of the children killed on Halloween evening die between 6pm and 9pm, the hours of trick-or-treating, and the single deadliest hour starts at 6pm.
Far fewer than before
The better news is how far the numbers have fallen. In 1975-84 an average of 5.8 children were killed on foot each Halloween evening. In 2015-24 it was 1.3. That follows a fall in child pedestrian deaths of every kind: from 1,435 a year to 241 over the same decades. The register cannot say why. It records deaths, not how many children walk, or where.
Halloween's lead has not gone away, though. In the eight years since the study's data end, 2017-24, nine children died on foot on Halloween evening and seven on the sixteen evenings a week either side. Those counts are too small to measure the risk with any precision. Over 2010-24 as a whole, Halloween is still the deadliest evening of the year for children on foot: 29 deaths, against five on the median evening and 14 on the next worst.
Adults are at risk too. Pedestrian deaths of all ages were 43% higher on Halloween evening in 1975-2016 and 21% higher in 2017-24, though that last figure cannot be told apart from no difference. And while child deaths have fallen, pedestrian deaths overall have risen again: 6,637 a year in 2015-24, against 4,618 in the decade before.
Data
Children killed on foot each evening of October and November
Pedestrians aged 4 to 17 killed between 5pm and midnight on each day from 1 October to 30 November, and pedestrians of all ages on the same evenings. Coverage: 1975-2024, all years added together. Source: NHTSA FARS; own calculations. evenings_october_november.csv
Every evening of the year ranked by children killed on foot
The 365 evenings of the year (29 February left out) ranked by pedestrians aged 4 to 17 killed between 5pm and midnight. Coverage: 1975-2024, all years added together. Source: NHTSA FARS; own calculations. evenings_ranked.csv
Halloween and ordinary evenings, year by year
Pedestrian deaths on Halloween evening and on the two control evenings a week before and after, each year, with the year's totals. Coverage: 1975-2024. Source: NHTSA FARS; own calculations. halloween_by_year.csv
How much deadlier Halloween evening is, by age and period
Pedestrian deaths on Halloween evening for every death on the average control evening, with an exact 95% range. Coverage: 1975-2016, 2017-2024, 1975-2024 and by decade. Source: NHTSA FARS; own calculations. halloween_ratios.csv
Children killed on Halloween evening, decade by decade
Average deaths a year on Halloween evening and on an ordinary evening, and all pedestrian deaths a year, by decade. Coverage: 1975-2024 in five decades. Source: NHTSA FARS; own calculations. halloween_by_decade.csv
All the files, with a README that explains every column, are in the data on GitHub, free to reuse with credit (CC BY 4.0).
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Our articles and data visualisations rely on work from many sources. When citing this article, please also cite the underlying data sources, listed with the data.
Signum Average (2026) - "Halloween is still the deadliest evening for children on foot" Published online at signumaverage.com. Retrieved from: https://signumaverage.com/articles/halloween-pedestrians/ [Online resource]
@article{signumaverage-2026-10-29-halloween-pedestrians,
author = {{Signum Average}},
title = {Halloween is still the deadliest evening for children on foot},
journal = {Signum Average},
year = {2026},
month = {oct},
url = {https://signumaverage.com/articles/halloween-pedestrians/},
note = {Online resource}
}
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