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SSChicken t1_iund1l0 wrote

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).

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vtriple t1_iuntczz wrote

Well really the main culprit for most pedestrians deaths is the lack of side walks…

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NookSwzy t1_iuntv26 wrote

Also roads designed for cars rather than pedestrians. There's a road in Utah that engineers refuse to augment to improve safety because it would reduce throughput and car speed.

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Verynearlydearlydone t1_iuo49f6 wrote

Many don’t because it would mean they admit fault in design. The Raquel Nelson story is a deeply saddening one and yet in many instances like it the DOT refuses to implement safer changes. It’s criminal negligence.

The author Jessie Singer had her boyfriend die. She followed that same path for a decade as person after person died and NYC refused to introduced safety upgrades. It wasn’t until a terrorist ran dozens of people over that they did something.

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thyme_cardamom t1_ius4tvh wrote

And having to cross large, fast roads between sidewalks. Unfortunately, to get most places you have to cross many streets to get there, and if the traffic is fast and the visibility bad, then it doesn't matter how good the sidewalk is.

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