all 29 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 5 points 5 hours ago

Trunk-or-treat is fucking sad, but necessary in some areas.

  • source
  • [–] 7 points 7 hours ago (1 child)

    Is it bad I assumed the y-axis was like hundreds or thousands?

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 162 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (6 children)

    A textbook example of how to lie with statistics.

    In the entire US there are around 10 child pedestrian deaths on an average night. On Halloween there are only around 14 deaths despite thousands more children on the street. This means the actual risk per child is exponentially lower on Halloween night.

    So the reality is the opposite of what's being claimed. Halloween is perhaps the least dangerous day of the year for child pedestrians.

  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 37 points 13 hours ago* (3 children)

    Which might also make sense, if drivers are aware that a lot of kids will be walking around, they might be more careful.

    I wonder how the number of deaths has changed over time. Road and vehicle safety have improved, lighting improved, it's more common for kids to have reflective objects on them, and fewer kids are going out. Maybe it was a lot worse in the past?

    So discussions like the ones in this thread have helped save lives, but I'd much rather the post itself wasn't misleading

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 13 points 11 hours ago

    Vehicle safety in the us for pedestrians is worse than ever. The amount of huge and heavy SUVs who hit people litterally like a truck with their high hoods, which also have huge dead spots in driver vision have counteracted the technical improvements made.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 13 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

    42 years of statistics were analyzed in the linked study. Perhaps the chart's creators were trying to alarm drivers and parents to make them more careful, but they could have done so without wildly overstating the danger.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 11 hours ago

    I wonder how the number of deaths has changed over time. Road and vehicle safety have improved, lighting improved, it’s more common for kids to have reflective objects on them, and fewer kids are going out. Maybe it was a lot worse in the past?

    also they changed the date for daylight savings time changes so now it's light until like, 8pm on halloween.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 8 points 9 hours ago

    Its also the busiest night of the year for pizza delivery and probably any other food delivery too.

  • source
  • [–] 17 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

    Maybe I’m getting old but I think I had this opinion always: I don’t understand why drivers don’t, eh, slow down?

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 40 points 14 hours ago* (2 children)

    *in the US

    Also more pedestrians=more pedestrian accidents, like duh

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 16 points 12 hours ago

    Base rate fallacy?

  • source
  • [–] 14 points 12 hours ago (1 child)

    Given it is almost certainly the day with the highest concentration of child pedestrians by a wide margin I can only imagine.

    Still, sounds like a great reason to be extra special careful on the road on the 31st.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 21 points 14 hours ago (1 child)

    The only day of the year children are allowed to go on foot beyond the end of their home driveway.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 9 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

    I'm surprise it's only a few times the background level. Historically, when more children went out, it was probably higher.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 28 points 13 hours ago (1 child)

    Yeah, looking at the stats, it's actually probably one of the safer days for kids to be pedestrians given the amount of extra miles walked by kids on Halloween.

    You'd really want this to be fatalities by miles walked, rather than raw fatalities.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 5 points 8 hours ago

    Yup. In any lotsa-kids area, they're everywhere, and everybody drives really slow because of it, but with 20 times the kids out and about, it's not unusual at all that there'd be two or three times more fatalities.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 12 hours ago

    Even without the stats, I would have assumed as much.
    The more you have people and cars in the same space, the more they will collide, and the more people will be killed. I expect it's not just kids but the same for adults too.

  • source
  • [–] 4 points 13 hours ago
    [–] 3 points 13 hours ago

    Double points?

  • source