Category: Biking in Maryland

I just ran across this story from June 26, 2010 about a 16 year old Olney boy seriously injured from being struck on his bike while trying to cross Route 108. And it seems no sooner did I learn of the extent of his injuries, I find out he has been back on his bike (at least once), going skiing and seems to be doing generally well from what little I have read so far. If you want to read about Tyler Junkin-Mills crash, recover or just stop in to say hi, visit https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/tylerjunkinmills

Then I read about another local boy

On a much, much more serious note, a local boy here – 17 years old – has died from injuries sustained in a car crash, after being in a coma with a brain injury for 3 1/2 weeks. We don’t know the family but it surely hits home for us. Of course it reminds us anew of how lucky we were, but my heart breaks for this boy’s family. Friends, please hold the family of Alex in the Light.

Just too many tragedies caused by the automobile, ya cars are convenient but at what price?.

With SHA updating their website I was glad to see they have retained a link to this wonderful resource for children’s bicycle safety. It is by far the best guide to introducing children to the world of bicycling that I have seen.

You might be asking why wouldn’t they include a great resource such as this? The short answer is it has yet to be branded by MDOT. This is a great resource developed on the advocacy end and not by a “The” Deportment of Transportation. While I have some appreciation of why MDOT is guarded against “special interest groups” but when it comes to safety MDOT makes use of national experts in other areas such as for the Commercial Drivers’ manual so why not here?

So while a link is great, this being printed and distributed would be even better. And it looks really easy to brand and get permission to reprint.

So I am curious what others think about this pamphlet or about the other pamphlets distributed by SHA on child safety. Is one noticeably better then the other? And does it seem strange to anyone else that one thing is offered on-line and something else is offered off-line?
Continue reading “BICYCLE SAFETY – What Every Parent Should Know”

Continue reading “Another fact check, cars pay for "their" roads”

Note: these funds could be used to help localities to be more bicycle friendly.

Continue reading “Yearly Obligation Rates of Federal Transportation Enhancement Funds by Fiscal Year 2003–2009”

Michael Dresser did some excellent reporting on this issue.

When it comes to pedestrians, Maryland is the anti-Vegas. What we have here is a dysfunctional relationship between drivers and walkers that helps ensure a seemingly permanent spot among the most dangerous states for pedestrians.

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But there are also cultural factors at work. Hedlund said that in California when a pedestrian moves to step off a curb, traffic cars are likely to stop. In Baltimore, they’re just as likely to speed up.

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Jamie Kendrick, Baltimore’s deputy transportation director, said that over the next month or so the city will seek bids on a project to install about 40 flashing signals, repaint the stripes on nearly 600 crosswalks, install more than 150 new handicapped-accessible ramps and curb cuts and put up nearly 700 pedestrian countdown signals.

Kendrick said all of the projects will be undertaken in school zones. In addition, he said, the city will announce a significant investment this spring on traffic-calming measures.

These initiatives are quite welcome, but they don’t add up to a comprehensive policy. It does nothing about crosswalks that aren’t in school zones. It doesn’t crack down on scofflaws.

For that, the city and other Maryland jurisdictions need to step up enforcement.

According to Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the governor’s safety group, other states have stepped up enforcement efforts using “decoy” pedestrians to nab drivers who ignore crosswalks.

Such operations have been used to good effect in the areas of drunken-driving and seat belt use, but they don’t make much of a dent without a media effort that gives each citation a multiplier effect.

Kendrick said Baltimore last mounted a sting operation in September but he acknowledges that it wasn’t well-publicized. These programs need to be done with a splash — including inviting video coverage of the enforcement actions. It would be fair if they targeted crosswalk-violating drivers and jay-walking pedestrians equally.

Meanwhile, the General Assembly ought to reconsider its current fines for pedestrian-related offenses. Right now, a ticket for a motorist failing to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk — one of the most dangerous of moving offenses — carries a measly $90 fine. Shouldn’t it be closer to the penalty for passing a school bus with flashing red lights? A $570 fine would certainly get motorists’ attention.

Last year, New York adapted the “Elle’s Law” statute, named for a 3-year-old girl who was struck in a crosswalk and left in a coma by an SUV traveling in reverse on a one-way street to grab a convenient parking space. The law automatically suspends the license of any driver who strikes a pedestrian while driving recklessly. Not a bad idea.

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There is growing evidence that roads safer for pedestrains are safer for cyclists and roads safer for cyclists are safer for pedestrains. In the discussions that came up on this topic the following PBS video was highlighted how our road are dangerous by design:

Continue reading “Maryland has a pedestrian problem”

by David Alpert
Pedestrian fatalities stopped declining in early 2010. Unfortunately, a safety nonprofit and its chairman, Maryland’s highway safety head, chose to blame pedestrians for getting killed while downplaying other, equally important causes.
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The press release also ignores the report’s recommendations that government do more to design safer roads. Perhaps that’s not a surprise since the organization comprises state highway safety officials who have done little to even admit to, let alone address, their governments’ complicity in these pedestrian deaths.
In his writeup of the report, the Post’s Ashley Halsey III buys into Betkey’s narrative wholesale. He talks about how many fatalities in Prince George’s and Fairfax counties, in particular, involve crossings at night, away from crosswalks.
But missing in this discussion is the question of why people are trying to cross dark roads where there are no crosswalks. In many busy areas of those counties, there are shopping centers along multi-lane arterials with poor lighting and long distances without crosswalks. If someone on foot wants to get to one of those stores and isn’t in a car, they have few alternatives. The pedestrian could be more careful, but also the government could be putting in better streetlights, crosswalks, and traffic signals.
To frame his piece, Halsey cites a fatality in Landover which did involve a signalized crosswalk. According to the article, the pedestrian signal was flashing the red "don’t walk" hand icon, during which time three teenagers ran across the road. A driver hit and killed 15-year-old Wayne Cuffy. Halsey’s piece is dripping with accusations against Cuffy:
>>> "It is the kind of risk teenagers take: darting across six lanes of traffic, paying no mind to the flashing sign warning pedestrians to await the green light. Wayne Cuffy and his buddies bolted across Landover Road on their way to the mall Tuesday night, a mistake that cost the 15-year-old his life when he stepped in front of a Ford Expedition at Dodge Park Road. … It was dark, and rush hour was winding down when they dashed into traffic toward the mall. Cuffy was struck just after he left the curb."
But wait. The signal was flashing the red hand. That means the traffic light was red for cross traffic. For the driver to hit Cuffy, the driver had to have run the red light (added: or made a turn without yielding).
Yet there’s absolutely no mention of this fact in Halsey’s article. Who’s really at fault: a teenager who hurries to get across the road before the light changes, but while cross traffic has still got the red light, or the driver who hits him despite the red light?
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Continue reading “Maryland road safety head, Post’s Halsey blame pedestrians and even Michelle Obama for fatalities”

All we need to do is introduce a new safety program and teach more Baltimoreans how to do this:

In an article about her selection, the ENR said Peters “finds herself continually in the spotlight as the human face of the largest, greenest and most controversial highway to be built in metropolitan Washington, D.C., in decades.”

B’Spokes: Greenest??? Because they nixed the required bike trail because as we all know bike trails are environmentally unfriendly, while six lane highways are good for the Environment. [/sarcasm]

The ICC is one of the biggest scams shoved down Maryland’s throat. But won’t it have some useful purpose? Sure, just like a gold plated Hummer with a grass planter on the roof has some useful purpose and is “environmentally friendly” but that’s not the point, the ICC will not solve the problems it was touted to solve and at billions of dollars it will never pay for itself, even with one of the highest toll rates in the nation (most highway projects are in the millions, not billions.)

Through out the life of the ICC my jaw has been just on the floor about all the underhanded tricks and scams to push the ICC through. Fast tracking to reduce the possibility of the public killing the highway yet again, threatening to fire any government employee on Maryland Bicycle Advisory Committee that would vote against killing the full and complete bike trail, calling bike trails environmentally unfriendly and expensive. And now “lets put a pleasant face on this”, this is just snake oil salesman tactics and whitewashing. I am just disgusted.
Continue reading “ICC project chief named a ‘top news-maker’”

First the disclaimer, this is speculation. So why speculate? Because there are a lot of pedestrains killed in this State, far more then what could be considered “normal”. And if I am near right I have opened the door for someone to sue SHA for not following the best engineering practices as required by State law. And maybe they will reexamine their polices and realize for the same money they could be a lot more pedestrian friendly/accommodating, which translates to saving lives.

The first topic, the pedestrian call button or the beg button or road engineers playing “Mother May I” with pedestrains. This is the way it’s always been done so we really don’t question the user interface but seriously imagine calling for an elevator and the button you pushed does nothing, no click, no light, just nothing. The indicator of what floor the elevator is on does not move . Now ask yourself how long would you wait before taking the stairs to go a short distance? I really have to ask why we expect pedestrains to behave differently? If a button acts like it is not working, we find a alternate way to cross, that is human behavior.

I found some helpful advice on dealing with ped call buttons from this site.

When you push the button, a call is put into the signal controller to let it know a pedestrian is waiting. The signal may not change immediately

Sometimes when the button is pushed there is not enough time for the signal controller to activate the walk phase. You should wait one more cycle for the “walk” sign. If the “walk” sign doesn’t come on the second time around, the signal is probably not working properly. You must use extreme caution when crossing under these conditions.

Well the first line should say “The signal well hardly ever change immediately.” That’s because if peds are the ones calling for a signal change they must endure a prequeue phase before anything is noticeable. They used to require this of cars as well, till they discovered that a high percentage of drivers ran the red lights, thinking the light was broken. Why they expect pedestrains to behave differently I will never comprehend. (Note: that the time for the prequeue was moved to after the crossing phase to control the frequency of crossing phases. This is for my engineer friends who imagine disastrous results if we let peds stop traffic whenever they want, relax, you still have control over the frequency. )

In the second paragraph “there is not enough time”, really. in this day and age of electronics? This is like saying, sorry we can’t open elevator doors if the elevator is already on the floor. The elevator must first go up and back down and only when the elevator first lands can it open doors and you get in. But note this issue would be solved if ped lights came on automatically. (See How Portland is doing it.)

Also note you are told you will have no idea if things are working or not. That’s just crazy! Just because things have always been the way does not mean that is the way they HAVE to work. Imagine pressing a elevator button that doesn’t light up, what are you going to do? Bang on it several times? If a button was designed like that on purpose you wouldn’t expect it to last very long with all that banging, right? My observations there are a lot of ped call buttons that no longer function. So not only do we have a poorly designed user interface we have one that is designed on purpose to wear out quickly and no routine procedure of maintenance (you have to call these things in to be fixed so they tend to stay broken for a very long time because they are a near useless thing to get fixed.)

All that was just problems pedestrains have in trying to get a crossing signal, now add to that a T intersection and the boy crossed against the light possibly as shown here:

If you are asking what light, well that’s the way they design T intersections so the light is not visible to pedestrains on one side of the street. The problem is then compounded by not having the ped signal go on automatically when appropriate and only having one crosswalk and the ped “beg” buttons that insist that only peds should endure a prequeue phase and no feedback that the button has been pressed or even working at all. The whole thing fails proper user interface design. Nothing of this century comes even close to this poorly designed interface so why do we accept this for pedestrian safety?

All this really sounds like stacking the deck against safe pedestrian crossings in this state. But it must be all the pedestrains fault on why we have such a high pedestrian fatality rate.

Again note these are just possibilities and not the facts in this case. But I for one am tired of just discounting this stuff to always pedestrian error. If there is a lot of motorist error they fix the problem with the road design but with pedestrians we are content that it is their own fault. Why is that exactly?
Continue reading “SHA kills boy for not saying "Mother May I" before crossing the road with "invisible" lights”

via Stop the Maryland Unsafe Driver

My conclusion is that there is a lot of scofflaw motorists in Maryland, after all what do you call someone who knows the law but does not obey it?