Austin Police Halloween Safety Tips for Families: Crosswalks, Glowsticks and Hand-Holding for Trick-or-Treating Tonight
Downtown has its own police plan tonight. For the neighborhoods, APD's family guidance is simpler: be visible, cross at crosswalks, hold hands in the street, and never go into a stranger's home or car.
The Austin Police Department has issued safety recommendations for families trick-or-treating tonight, aimed at the part of Halloween that happens on neighborhood streets rather than downtown. The guidance, reported by KEYE, starts with visibility: drivers struggle to see pedestrians at night, and young children can move into the street unexpectedly.
The visibility list is specific. Parents are advised to build flashlights, glowsticks or reflectors into children's costumes - toddlers included - so passing vehicles can see them after dark. Reflective gear or a glowstick on the costume itself counts; the point, under the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration pedestrian protocols the advisory follows, is that a driver should be able to pick a child out before the headlights are on top of them.
Two street rules carry the rest of the guidance. Children should use designated crosswalks at all times, and parents should hold hands when walking in the street so a child cannot wander into traffic. And the stranger rule is stated plainly: children should not enter the homes or vehicles of strangers, however friendly the invitation sounds on Halloween night.
None of it takes long to set up before dark: a route planned in advance, a glowstick or reflector on each costume, a flashlight in a parent's hand, and the crosswalk-and-hand-holding plan said out loud before the first door. Austin's trick-or-treating runs tonight, October 31, through neighborhoods across the city.
