Every Halloween, around 160 million people go trick-or-treating in the United States alone, giving kids and grown-ups alike the chance to show off their costumes and decorations to the neighborhood.
It’s undoubtedly one of the highlights of spooky season. But with Halloween falling as it starts to get darker earlier, having people wander the streets at night understandably presents its fair share of real-life horrors. And now, a fascinating new survey by personal injury lawyers Anidjar & Levine has revealed precisely where America’s most dangerous (and safest) trick-or-treating states are to be found.
The Most Dangerous States by Danger Score
The study’s authors collated all the most recent available data for each state across a range of potential pedestrian dangers, including traffic safety, pedestrian fatalities, violent crime rates, and even abduction statistics. These numbers were then crunched and indexed to give each state a so-called “Trick-or-Treater Danger Score,” ranging from 0 to 100. The higher the score, the greater the risk to a local trick-or-treater in the state.
With a trick-or-treat danger score of 61.89, New Mexico came out on top in the survey as America’s most dangerous at this time of year, standing a full 10 points clear of its competition at the top of the table. That high score was in part due to some of the highest road safety, violent crime, and abduction rates of any state in the survey, combined with the highest number of pedestrian fatalities (4.97 per 100,000 people) of anywhere in the United States.
South Carolina came in second in the survey, with a danger score of 50.39, followed by Wyoming, almost another 10 points behind that, with 41.45. Wyoming actually scored higher than South Carolina in the survey’s road safety index (91.50 compared to 82.12), but South Carolina’s far higher violent crime rate (477 reports per 100,000 people) earned it second place overall. Wyoming’s crime rate of just 181 incidents per 100,000 people, meanwhile, was actually the second lowest in the Top 10, after 10th-place Mississippi.
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Just a few decimal points adrift of Wyoming, Arizona ranked in a close fourth place in the survey, with a combined trick-or-treat danger score of 41.37, followed by Tennessee in fifth. Despite Tennessee recording the second-highest abduction and violent crime rates in the entire Top 10, its road safety stats were among the best overall, putting it a full point below Arizona with an overall trick-or-treat danger score of 40.20.
Indiana (40.01), Louisiana (39.89), Montana (38.79), Arkansas (38.28), and Mississippi (34.47) filled out the remainder of the Top 10. See the full list of the top 10 most dangerous states below:
Rank | State | Pedestrian Fatalities (Overall, Per 100k Population) | Pedestrian Injuries | Road Safety Score (0-100) | Violent Crime Rate (Per 100k Residents) | Abduction Rate (Per 100k Residents) | Trick-or-Treater Danger Score (0-100) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | New Mexico | 4.97 | 0 | 67.52 | 702.01 | 52.02 | 61.89 |
2 | South Carolina | 3.48 | 0 | 82.12 | 477.37 | 18.46 | 50.39 |
3 | Wyoming | 1.88 | 0 | 91.50 | 181.15 | 15.41 | 41.45 |
4 | Arizona | 3.65 | 0 | 60.94 | 408.10 | 11.26 | 41.37 |
5 | Tennessee | 2.61 | 0 | 51.62 | 637.07 | 30.03 | 40.20 |
6 | Indiana | 1.40 | 0.15 | 33.73 | 317.81 | 28.02 | 40.01 |
7 | Louisiana | 3.17 | 0 | 55.63 | 522.72 | 16.18 | 39.89 |
8 | Montana | 1.77 | 0 | 69.45 | 441.91 | 25.16 | 38.79 |
9 | Arkansas | 2.41 | 0 | 53.01 | 615.34 | 23.96 | 38.28 |
10 | Mississippi | 2.93 | 0 | 67.00 | 113.45 | 3.67 | 34.47 |
At the opposite end of the table, the survey also revealed the safest trick-or-treating states, with no less than four US states scoring overall trick-or-treat danger scores of less than 10.
The Least Dangerous States by Danger Score
Safest of all was Massachusetts, with an overall score of just 6.03 thanks to the best road safety score in the entire United States (0.97) and an average of just 0.96 pedestrian fatalities recorded per 100,000 people. Not far behind, with a score of 6.90, Rhode Island ranked in second place overall, with some of the lowest violent crime and abduction rates in the country.
And in third place, New Jersey had a trick-or-treat danger score of 8.71, thanks to an impressively low road safety score of just 4.73.
In fact, the northeast corner of the United States fared remarkably well in the survey, with New England and the surrounding area filling out much of the rest of the Top 10. Maine (9.99) and New Hampshire (10.52) ranked in fourth and fifth place overall, followed by Connecticut (11.97) in seventh, Vermont (12.12) in eighth, and New York (13.47) in ninth. Only sixth-place Nebraska (11.55) and 10th-place Utah (14.58) were located elsewhere at the safer end of the survey’s data.
See the full list of the top 10 safest states below:
Rank | State | Pedestrian Fatalities (Overall, Per 100k Population) | Pedestrian Injuries | Road Safety Score (0-100) | Violent Crime Rate (Per 100k Residents) | Abduction Rate (Per 100k Residents) | Trick-or-Treater Danger Score (0-100) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Massachusetts | 0.96 | 0 | 0.97 | 313.98 | 8.54 | 6.03 |
2 | Rhode Island | 1.00 | 0 | 11.79 | 168.53 | 3.10 | 6.90 |
3 | New Jersey | 1.78 | 0 | 4.73 | 215.43 | 3.22 | 8.71 |
4 | Maine | 1.36 | 0 | 19.20 | 104.46 | 1.79 | 9.99 |
5 | New Hampshire | 1.07 | 0 | 15.44 | 115.76 | 17.47 | 10.52 |
6 | Nebraska | 0.66 | 0.15 | 25.13 | 170.44 | 11.17 | 11.55 |
7 | Connecticut | 1.30 | 0 | 20.02 | 154.07 | 8.35 | 11.97 |
8 | Vermont | 0.77 | 0 | 22.16 | 214.99 | 13.44 | 12.12 |
9 | New York | 1.48 | 0.03 | 2.99 | 392.41 | 8.73 | 13.47 |
10 | Utah | 1.11 | 0 | 11.40 | 232.52 | 36.14 | 14.58 |
For more on how this survey was carried out and how the data was prepared, click the press release here.