“Secretary LaHood pledged to work with Congress to ensure that the issue of distracted driving is appropriately addressed. He also announced a number of immediate actions the Department is taking to combat distracted driving, including the Department’s plan to create three separate rulemakings that would consider:
Please read the full summary at: <http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2009/dot15609.htm> and The League’s Distracted Driving Summit <http://www.bikeleague.org/blog/2009/09/distracted-driving-summit/> blog.
There is plenty of work ahead of us at the state and local level. We will continue to keep you updated as we move forward.
Chanda Causer
Grants Manager & Training Coordinator
Alliance for Biking & Walking
A brief highlight of the Leagues page:
"Noah Budnick of Transportation Alternatives in New York City offers a complete analysis in the Executive Order report, which recommends 20 measures covering enforcement, adjudication, transparency, investigation and prosecution all aimed at changing driver behavior to improve safety."
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Drivers can expect to see speed-monitoring cameras operating soon in about a dozen school zones in Baltimore County, and those caught exceeding the posted speed limit by 12 mph will face a $40 fine.
The County Council authorized the speed cameras in a 6-1 vote Tuesday. The council added amendments limiting the number of cameras to 15 and requiring an annual report. Councilman T. Bryan McIntire dissented, saying, "I think it's more effective to have police on duty."
Administrators will have to negotiate a contract for leasing the equipment and bring that back to the council, before the cameras are installed.
Source: Baltimore Sun
The point is no one likes living in the 6th highest pedestrian fatality rate state and something needs to be done. And if the raking is not enough, the chart below shows that Maryland is now 43% higher then the national average for the pedestrian fatality rate:
14,259 crashes resulting in 70 lives lost and 6,972 people injured
Each year in Maryland, more than 630 people die in traffic crashes - most, if not all, caused by at least one poor decision. In fact, 93% of all traffic crashes are caused by driver error. Choose Safety for Life represents a coalition of safety partners and calls upon drivers, pedestrians and cyclists to make safe, sound decisions when traveling Maryland roadways. By making the right choices, you can save lives and prevent injuries.
Emphasis Area #3d – Make Walking and Crossing Streets Safer
Typically, between 95 and 110 pedestrians are fatally injured on Maryland’s streets and highways each year. Pedestrian fatalities comprise about 20 percent of all traffic deaths. About 12 percent of fatally injured pedestrians are 15 years or younger and another 19 percent are 65 years or older. Nearly 3,000 pedestrians are injured annually, more than one-third of which occur in Baltimore City and more than another one-third of which occur in Baltimore, Montgomery, and Prince George’s Counties. Pedestrians 15 years of age and younger are particularly vulnerable to being injured – over 30 percent of injured pedestrians are in this age group.
I strongly urge transportation planners and engineers in our region, especially Balt City and County, to take a look at this innovative new set of tools and consider local implementation. Conventional painted bike lanes and other "weak" measures including sharrows and off-road bike paths, that do little to create complete streets, IMO, are all inadequate tools for enabling a fundamental shift towards widespread "transportational" bicycle use in the region. The dense, interconnected grid of streets in Baltimore could easily accommodate a network of bike boulevards.
- SS on EnvisionBaltimore.
What are Bicycle Boulevards?
Bicycle boulevards take the shared roadway bike facility to a new level, creating an attractive, convenient, and comfortable cycling environment that is welcoming to cyclists of all ages and skill levels.
In essence, bicycle boulevards are low-volume and low-speed streets that have been optimized for bicycle travel through treatments such as traffic calming and traffic reduction, signage and pavement markings, and intersection crossing treatments. These treatments allow through movements for cyclists while discouraging similar through trips by nonlocal motorized traffic. Motor vehicle access to properties along the route is maintained.
By By Mark Rosenberg - Boston Globe
THREE YEARS AGO, I was driving in Atlanta early one morning when I saw a body on the road. It was a young female runner. I called 911 and then ran to her. She had a horrendous head injury but still had a heart beat. I started CPR, but her injuries were too severe. She died in my hands. I wrote a column in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about what happened to the runner, and a flood of letters came in.
Half blamed the runner, saying she should not have been running in the street at that hour. Half blamed the driver, for not paying close enough attention. Not a single writer blamed the road.
I took a photograph of the scene where I had found the runner. When I showed this picture to friends from Sweden they asked, “This is where you live? This is your neighborhood? Your streets are designed to kill people.’’ They said that the thin painted white lines at the intersection could not be seen at dawn, nor was there a raised bump to or a narrowing of the road to demarcate the intersection and slow down traffic. They said the speed limit should be 30 kilometers per hour (about 18.6 miles per hour) or less if we wanted pedestrians to have much of a chance of surviving. They also said traffic lights increased the number of deaths because people often speed up when the light turns yellow.
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Most people think we are doing all that can be done to keep our roads safe. They are wrong. Road traffic injuries kill more than a million people a year worldwide, including 40,000 a year in the United States. We will continue to have drivers who are too young or too old, too distracted, or too bold, but we can change our roads so they help protect both drivers and pedestrians. Reaching Vision Zero may take us a while but how in the world could we ever justify not starting now?
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