Halloween Safety Guide for Families

By Jason Brick

It’s a spooky time of year — even downright scary if your kids want to trick or treat alone or borrow the car for a friend’s costume party. Keep your boo crew safe (and your Parent Puberty symptoms in check) with these Halloween safety tips from our resident safety expert, Jason Brick. 

How to Stay Safe Trick or Treating: 4 Risk Factors

Halloween night is more dangerous than other nights, but not for the reasons you might think. So, what are some trick-or-treating hazards that should be top of mind on All Hallow’s Eve? The four most statistically likely are detailed below.

Traffic accidents

On Halloween, you have darker hours, busier streets, higher than average DUIs, and kids running around unpredictably. That’s a recipe for more children getting hit by cars, and that’s a founded concern that parents should have. Not everyone is going to use safe driving measures on Halloween, so be sure to guard against this by:

• Using face paint instead of masks to maximize your child’s field of vision

• Trick-or-treating in low-traffic neighborhoods, malls, and parks

• Encouraging brightly-colored costumes and sewing reflective strips onto darker clothing

• Hanging a glow stick on a lanyard over every kid in your trick-or-treating group

• Wrapping up your trick-or-treating as dusk turns to dark for better visibility and to get in before the drunk drivers come out

Cold weather concerns

Few people think about this, but cooler temps are a serious issue every year. Halloween falls just as autumn is starting to feel like winter, and costumes are rarely designed with the weather in mind. Keep your kids safe from this by:

• Putting clothes on underneath the costume so that kids have their outfit on full display but stay warm

• Incorporating cloaks, jackets, and gloves into costumes for extra warmth

• Paying special attention to footwear and trading in thin costume parts for good shoes or boots as temperatures drop

• Eliminating any tight or restrictive costume parts, which reduce circulation and increase the risk of frostbite

Staying on the radar

As your kids get older, they’ll likely want to trick or treat on their own. You can help prevent them from getting lost with a few simple moves:

• Setting up a check-in meeting every 20 minutes to reorient them and minimize the time if they do get lost 

• Mapping their route ahead of time, so you know where to start looking if they miss a check-in

• Becoming familiar with the location safety feature in Life360, so you know where your kids are even when they don’t

Teaching your kids how to use the SOS feature in Life360, so they can call for help if they get turned around

Teen driving

Driving is a rite of passage for most teens during their high school years. It’s also a serious risk that’s responsible for nearly half of teen deaths and injuries every year. It’s good to have them start driving while they’re still at home and close by, so you can offer supervision and improve the odds while they’re on the road. You can help prepare them by: 

• Teaching accident response and showing them how Life360’s free Crash Detection feature works

• Getting them basic First Aid and trauma medicine training, so they can help themselves and their friends if there are injuries

• Making sure they know how to gather contact information and handle the legal aspects of a wreck

• Stocking an emergency kit (jumper cables, snow chains, flashlight, phone chargers, warm weather clothes, spare shoes, a first aid kit, a spare tire with changing tools, food, and something to drink) in the trunk of every car your teen will drive – also consider giving one as a holiday gift to people they drive with

• Reminding them about Life360’s 24/7 Roadside Assistance and how to access it

Know Where Your Kids Are This Halloween

Teenage years can be a scary time for parents, and a riskier time for teens as they spend more time unsupervised and making their own decisions. Here are a few other things you can do to keep them safe while they flex their independence:

• Setting expectations ahead of time, but don’t micromanage how teens meet those expectations

• Activating Life360’s Bubbles, an optional feature in our location that shares only an approximate location that’s within a few blocks. Bubbles automatically “burst” if there’s a car crash, emergency, or if the SOS feature is set off

• Having a text code they can use to summon your help without appearing to do so

• Picking your battles, while still standing firm on things that impact their safety

• Staying informed about their interests and life, and keeping them informed about some of the risks they’re taking

• Watching for changes in behavior, more than worrying about any single behavior, that indicate something new and potentially dangerous

Enjoy a Safe Halloween with Life360

Whatever your family is doing this Halloween, Life360 has the backup safety features to keep each Circle member safe. Have fun and be safe out there!