The short version
On the 31st, the risk is not ghosts. It is a child in a dark costume crossing between parked cars at dusk, in a group, excited. Visibility is the only safety question that changes outcomes, and it is solved with light rather than with reflective strips that face the wrong way half the time.
Light beats reflection
A reflective strip only works when a headlight is pointed at it. A lit lantern, a glowing accessory or a light clipped to a bag works from every angle and at every moment, including when the child is between two cars and no headlight is aimed anywhere useful.
That is why almost everything in Trick or Treat is either lit or light-coloured. A black costume is the classic choice and the worst one for a road at dusk; if it is the costume the child wants, the answer is to add light rather than to argue.
The costume has to survive two hours of walking
Hems that drag get stepped on. Capes catch on gates. Masks fog up within ten minutes of walking and then get pushed onto the top of the head, where they do nothing. Face paint solves all three, and it photographs better than a mask because the child's expression is visible.
Shoes are worth one minute of thought. The evening involves more walking than anyone plans for, usually on pavements, in the cold. Whatever the child already walks comfortably in beats anything bought for the costume.
The bag
A bag with a handle that goes over the shoulder leaves both hands free — for gates, for doorbells, for holding someone's hand. A bucket held in one hand is full within an hour and then gets carried badly. If the bag is lit, it doubles as the visibility solution and one item covers both problems.
Practical rules that hold
Agree the route before leaving, not during. Set an end time and say it out loud at the start. Carry a small torch, because at some point someone drops something. And eat before going out — a child who is hungry at half past six will eat unsorted sweets at seven.
Sorting the haul, without ruining the evening
The sorting happens at home, in the light, and it takes five minutes. Anything unwrapped or opened goes. Anything homemade from a house you do not know goes. Everything else is fine, and turning the check into a ceremony rather than an inspection keeps the evening intact.
Setting an amount for the night before leaving avoids the negotiation on the doorstep. The rest goes in a tin, and the tin is not in the child's room.
The cold, which decides when you turn back
Most rounds end early because someone is cold, not because the bag is full. A costume that fits over a coat, or a coat that reads as part of the costume, adds an hour to the evening. Gloves in a pocket cost nothing and are the difference between finishing the street and turning back at number twelve.
The hour that carries the risk, in figures
The danger on Halloween night is not spread evenly, and it is not where most people look for it. Safe Kids Worldwide reports that children under 18 are 3.5 times more likely to be fatally injured by a car on Halloween than on any other day. In ordinary terms: an average of 2.6 child pedestrian deaths a day across the year, and 5.5 on 31 October.
Two details make that figure usable rather than merely alarming. Most of these deaths occur between 5 and 9 p.m., with the highest risk between 6 and 7 p.m. — the hour when dusk falls and the street fills at the same time. And the age group most often involved is 12 to 15, not the small children everyone watches. The teenagers who have just been allowed out alone are the ones at risk.
That changes what a parent should actually do. Being visible matters more than any other precaution during that single hour: reflective tape on a dark costume, a torch carried rather than pocketed, crossings used even when the street looks empty. And the conversation worth having is with the 13-year-old who has been given the evening off, not only with the six-year-old holding your hand.
Source: Safe Kids Worldwide, Halloween pedestrian safety research.