This graph is saying that about 200 child pedestrians died on halloween from 1982 to 2020, vs 75 on a normal fall day, so 125 extra deaths over 38 years. Is that right?
That’s about 3.3 excess deaths per year.
There are about ~40 million kids aged 5 to 14. Some older and younger kids also trick-or-treat, I’d guess overall something close to ~33 million trick-or-treaters per year (farmers’ almanac gives an unsourced guess of 35 million).
So that’s about 1⁄10 million risk of death per trick-or-treater.
If a parent would pay about 100 years of their life to save their child’s life, they’d be willing to pay about 5 minutes to eliminate the trick-or-treat accident risk.
Quantifying average costs:
This graph is saying that about 200 child pedestrians died on halloween from 1982 to 2020, vs 75 on a normal fall day, so 125 extra deaths over 38 years. Is that right?
That’s about 3.3 excess deaths per year.
There are about ~40 million kids aged 5 to 14. Some older and younger kids also trick-or-treat, I’d guess overall something close to ~33 million trick-or-treaters per year (farmers’ almanac gives an unsourced guess of 35 million).
So that’s about 1⁄10 million risk of death per trick-or-treater.
If a parent would pay about 100 years of their life to save their child’s life, they’d be willing to pay about 5 minutes to eliminate the trick-or-treat accident risk.
(There were fewer trick-or-treaters in the past, so the denominator is lower than 33 million per year, but I think that’s overwhelmed by road safety improvements making modern trick-or-treating safer—total pedestrian fatalities are currently similar to their long-term average despite our growing population, and child fatalities in particular seem even lower.)