Halloween Hazards: Ensuring a Safe All Hallows’ Eve

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From Trick-or-Treating, to classroom parties, to visiting a local haunted house, there is so much fun to be had on and around Halloween! However, there is a very fine line between fun and safety concerns due to traffic or non-traffic incidents (such as accidents occurring on driveways, in parking lots, or on private property). 

Between your children’s safety and your property, Halloween can be more an evening of mischief than magic.

Five Halloween Hazards and How Preferred Mutual Can Help

1. Your car gets egged.

It’s nothing new; insurance claims related to car vandalism are on the rise, especially on the days leading up to Halloween, on the day of, and after.  Everything from a witch’s broom, to raw eggs, to pumpkins and rocks, can become a common projectile.

How Preferred Can Help: If your car can’t be cleaned or suffers serious damage, such as a broken window, give us a call! This type of damage might be covered by your comprehensive coverage on your vehicle!

If there is damage to trees or landscaping due to some unfriendly goblins who have “TP’d” your yard, you might be covered, too!

How Preferred Can Help: If the damage is significant, your homeowners insurance might cover you, but if you are making a claim, call us for an inspection before you clean it up! An adjuster needs to document everything, including the damage and debris.

Perhaps it was a vintage lawn gnome, or a life-size, cut-out of a vampire, your yard is vulnerable to tricksters dressed like treaters.

How Preferred Can Help: Standard homeowners, condo and renters’ insurance often provides coverage if outdoor decorations disappear.  Preferred urges you to save all of your receipts and make a police report if things go missing!

Residential fires are more common around Halloween, according to the U.S. Fire Administration.  The biggest causes are cooking and heating, but carelessness, open flames, electrical malfunctions and intentional acts are also to blame for the heightened statistics on Halloween.

How Preferred Can help: Fire damage is covered by your homeowners insurance, including living expenses should you have to stay somewhere else during the repairs to your home.  If your home sustains fire damage, give us a call once fire rescue has put out the fire! Rented property is usually covered by the landlord’s policy, but you’ll still need renters’ insurance to get reimbursed for your personal belongings!

Right alongside New Year’s Eve, Halloween sees a higher number of pedestrian deaths than any other night of the year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. 

Sadly, many victims are children.

Because their costumes can be hard to see, often walking the streets without parental supervision and more likely to dart into the street, children are more than twice as likely to be struck by a vehicle.

Stay alert, don’t drive distracted or intoxicated!

How Preferred Can Help: If you cause injury to a person while driving, if you have auto liability insurance, Preferred Mutual will cover the injuries!

Prevent Problems: Park your cars in the garage or a well-lit area, use battery-operated candles or glow sticks in your pumpkins, and be cautious when driving on Halloween!

Discuss your policies with your insurance agent, today: You don’t want to find out after sustaining damage that something isn’t covered. Call your independent agent today, discuss these 5 potential hazards to find out if you’re covered by your insurance policies! 

When ghosts and goblins run amok, only people with the right insurance will find themselves lucky.  Preferred Mutual calls that living assured.