Stay smart on the street, avoid a ticket
By Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer 11/16/08
Police departments in the District, suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia today will launch their fall “Street Smart” campaigns, a regionwide effort to enforce traffic and pedestrian safety laws, reduce traffic-related fatalities and change people’s behaviors as they navigate area roadways.
Ninety-one pedestrians died in 2007 in the D.C. metropolitan area — 25 in the District, 29 in Northern Virginia, and 37 in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. An additional 14 pedestrians and two cyclists have been killed in D.C. this year.
Last November’s Street Smart campaign included an advertising blitz featured the theme “Steel vs. Flesh. It’s no contest.” The fall 2008 wave will again target individuals through the media in addition to strict enforcement of road safety laws.
D.C. police alone issued nearly 6,000 citations during the 2007 Street Smart enforcement campaign — 3,725 to drivers and 1,931 to pedestrians. Roughly 2,900 pedestrians and cyclists are injured annually in the region.
“From our standpoint, we always promote same rights, same responsibilities,” said Eric Gilliland, executive director of the Washington Area Bicyclists Association. “Everyone has an equal right to share the road and equal responsibility for safety.”
But there are so many more drivers than cyclists, Gilliland said, that the enforcement should certainly focus more heavily on vehicles.
“This is a twice-a-year shot that needs to be more comprehensive,” he said of Street Smart. “Instead of these weeklong waves, it needs to be a constant enforcement effort that we’re not seeing happen.”
Crash research reveals the responsibility for pedestrian-vehicular crashes is “shared almost equally,” according to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, which organizes the effort. Changing the behavior of an entire population takes between eight and 12 years.
“There is daily, deadly behavior among drivers, cyclists and pedestrians, on any street or thoroughfare throughout the region,” the Street Smart 2008 annual report states. “Drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists aren’t paying attention to local traffic rules and to each other when traveling in the area.”
What are people doing wrong? Pedestrians and cyclists, preoccupied with cell phones or iPods, frequently fail to look both ways before crossing, or cross streets against traffic signals or outside of crosswalks, according to the council. Drivers face the same distractions, plus they fail to share the road, ignore crosswalk laws, drive too fast and drive carelessly especially near schools and in busy intersections.
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