Halloween Safety Tips: Safety and flashlights

By Mark How-to

Here are two Halloween safety tips we use for our kids. They’re simple and inexpensive.

The first of our Halloween safety tips is a clip-on safety light—that blinks. Actually, it’s two. Once our little guy is ready to run out the door to trick or treat, we clip one on the front, one on the back. And we set them to blink (not just “on”). We think they’re much easier for motorists to see as we cross streets and run around with other kids. It’s also easier for me to spot him if he weaves into a gaggle of kids; I know which one he is in a heartbeat.

Number two on our list of Halloween safety tips we use is giving him a bright, but small, LED flashlight. At his age (5) he likes to carry it and the more he runs and jumps the more that thing’s beam is flying around like an Angry Birds Star Wars light saber.

All three lights are either blinking rapidly and/or in motion. I call this being “disruptively visible.” In other words, there are a million lights all over the place, but they’re constant like a porch lamp or landscape lighting, and even headlights.

I know from running, cycling, and driving at night that a blinking or moving light gets my attention quickly compared to other types of light. We think the blinking gives us as parents an advantage over the unplanned. And sometimes giving yourself a chance to be lucky is all the difference you need.

Have a lucky Halloween.