Trunk or Treat Vehicle Safety Tips

Trunk or Treat: What is it?

The trunk-or-treat tradition has become more and more popular in schools and children’s programs over the years. However, some may not be aware of it.

Halloween trunk-or-treat is an event that brings together parents, teachers, and extended family members in a small area. Kids dress up in their costumes and collect candy from decorated trunks.

You may ask, “What does this have to do with automobile insurance?” If decorations are used wrongly, clean-up can be a problem. If clean-up is a problem, a lot of things can go wrong with your vehicle. Here are some tips on how to Trunk-or-Treat with safety in mind.

Let’s see what Trunk-or-Treat fun we can turn from hazardous to safe for your vehicle.

Decide on a theme

When picking the best theme for your trunk-or-treat event, keep this in mind. Many people decorate their trunks to look like haunted houses, pumpkins, and other Halloween-themed things.

Think outside of the box when you are researching ideas. Here are some ideas from our DIY friends on “buzzfeed” that might be helpful.

https://bzfd.it/3QyR6KA

If you are driving to the event, some of the Trunk or Treat ideas may not be the best. Safety is the main concern on the road, so be prepared to set up your kid friendly trunk theme on site. You never know if you may need to access your trunk due to an emergency on the way to the event!

Make wise choices when choosing decorations

There is nothing more fun than dressing up for Trunk-or-Treat. The design is half the fun! Remember that every decoration could potentially damage your vehicle.

When you decide on your theme, go to your nearest dollar store and purchase as many related safe decorations as possible, then, if necessary, move on to more expensive stores. School-aged children do not care about prices, only about the appearance.

It’s not too crowded

You can get carried away when it comes to decorating. Follow these 3 tips from Safety Northeast Insurance to keep your decorations in check.

If you are going to be at this event for a few hours, leave room in your trunk for yourself and one other person to sit down.

When you have hanging decorations, make sure they are secure but don’t have too many hands-on items. Children are handy – If you have hanging decorations, make sure they are secure but will not damage electrical cables in your trunk if pulled on.

Work outside in – Imagine your trunk is like a picture, decorate the frame before editing the picture.

Clean-up

After all is said and done, clean-up is a guaranteed aftereffect of trunk or treats. We recommend you perform the clean up right there after the occasion. If it is not possible to clean out your trunk right immediately due exit traffic operations at the event. Clean out your trunk once you return to your residence. It can be hazardous driving around with a fully decorated trunk.

When you clean up your trunk after Trunk-or-Treat, be sure to clean the carpets inside as children’s hands can get sticky from candy consumption and can ruin your interior and items loaded back into your trunk. A sticky sugar coated trunk can wreak havoc with your personal items and your vehicles electrical system once you reload your trunk.

Keep your vehicle clean by vacuuming all crevices and even underneath your rear seats. You never know what scary surprises may have found there way up to your vehicle cab underneath your seating.

If your decorations get into the nitty-gritty parts of your vehicle, they can cause a lot of damage. Streamers can wrap around important parts, fake spider webs can constrict vehicles. Pay special attention to any decorations that may have been attached to vehicle cables.

In general, keep an eye out for things that need to be cleaned and dispose of them properly.

Halloween’s scariest part

The scariest thing about Halloween is that people are driving around without automobile insurance to help make this less scary make sure your policy has protection for uninsured and underinsured drivers.

Safety Northeast Insurance can provide a free audit to review what sort of protection is currently included in your vehicles policy.

Having some “scary fun” on Halloween is great but it should not include having to pick up the bills should an uninsured driver give you a scare or if lingering decorations cause damage to your vehicle’s operation.

Reach out to Safety Northeast Insurance for your free Auto Insurance review!