Crackdown to Keep Pedestrians Safe Comes to Howard County

Drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians share the responsibility of keeping themselves and others safe, and they’ll be put to the test as part of a campaign coming to Howard County, officials say.

The campaign, called Street Smart, launched in the Baltimore region in fall 2009. On Tuesday, officials came to Columbia to launch the effort in Howard County, a grant-funded push to educate and enforce safe habits.

“We will be out in force on a number of roadways where this is an issue,” said Howard County Police Chief William McMahon. “We will be looking for violations.”

After analyzing data, Howard County police decided to direct enforcement efforts along Route 1 in Elkridge and Laurel, Route 40 in Ellicott City and Little Patuxent Parkway in Columbia, according to a news release.

This means pedestrians will be given citations if they don’t use crosswalks and drivers will be cited if they don’t follow crosswalk laws or follow bicyclists at a distance more than three feet. Bicyclists will receive citations for not obeying signals and various other infractions.

“Slow down. Get off the cell phones. Pay attention to the road. Pay attention to who’s sharing that road with you,” said Howard County Executive Ken Ulman, speaking in front of a few dozen police officers, officials and residents Tuesday in a parking lot at The Mall in Columbia.

In the Baltimore region, there are an average of 1,700 pedestrian and 500 bicycle crashes each year, with 52 people killed in those collisions, according to a news release from the Howard County Police Department and the Baltimore Metropolitan Council.

The state is directing $400,000 of federal highway safety dollars to the Street Smart campaign, buying radio and television ads “to hammer home that the lives of families and friends depends on making the right decisions,” said Darrell Mobley, deputy secretary of the Maryland Department of Transportation.

The effort will also include campaign billboards along Route 1; messages on buses and in print; and street teams that will hand out pamphlets to bicyclists, pedestrians and people living in high-risk areas, according to the news release.

When it comes to safety, “it’s easy to point the finger at the vehicles,” said McMahon, but "we all have a role as pedestrians, as cyclists, as drivers—all of us—to make sure these collisions don’t happen.”

Route 1 and Route 40 in particular were concerns, said Ulman. “Where we have issues, it’s along those corridors, where folks are walking across the street to get home after shopping or eating,” he said.

“We have a community that was designed for the automobile. It was not designed for roads to be shared easily with pedestrians and bicyclists,” he added. “We’ve been working very hard to make progress in that area. We still have a lot more to do.”

For more information on Street Smart, click this link.