As autumn days get darker, pedestrian safety in spotlight

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As autumn days get darker, pedestrian safety in spotlight
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by Agnes Blum
Staff Writer


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Oct. 29, 2003
With the onset of fall come changing leaves, cooler nights and shorter days. Autumn also means more pedestrians being hit by cars, according to national and county statistics.

October, November and December are the deadliest months for pedestrian accidents, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In 2001, those months made up 32 percent of annual pedestrian fatalities nationally.

In Montgomery County, shorter days mean more people are walking on roadways in the dark, said Nancy Nickerson, Montgomery County Police spokeswoman.

About two-thirds of all national pedestrian fatalities occur on dark or dimly lit streets, according to the NHTSA.

In 2002, 18 pedestrians were killed in Montgomery County, 104 were killed in Maryland and 4,808 were killed nationally. There were 71,000 pedestrians injured nationwide. Those numbers represent an increase from 2001, when 4,482 pedestrians died, but an overall decline in the past 10 years. In 1991, the number was 5,801, according to the NHTSA.

For Barbara T. Blaustein, 48, of Silver Spring, those are not abstract statistics.

In 1997, she was on her way to work, crossing University Boulevard with the light, when a minivan ran a red light and struck her. She spent the next four days in intensive care with a spinal cord injury. She has had about a half dozen surgeries since. Unable to go back to work as a computer scientist, Blaustein has been undergoing physical rehabilitation and receiving disability. The mother of two said she now struggles with little things, such as tying her shoes, or peeling back the foil on a cup of yogurt. But, she said, she is lucky to be alive.

Walking, however, remains both physically challenging and anxiety-provoking.

"The truth is, my confidence is completely undermined even though I was crossing at the light, in a crosswalk," Blaustein said. "This happened to me in a crosswalk. I did all the right things and this still happened."

So far this year, six pedestrians have been killed in Montgomery County. There is no way to know exactly how many people have been hit by cars, said Lucille Baur, a Montgomery County Police spokeswoman.

"There are times when a pedestrian is struck, when the injury is so minor, we're not told," Baur said. "We're only notified when it's serious."

Since Oct. 1, there have been five incidents reported to the county police of pedestrians being hit by cars.

*On Oct. 7, Sufia Perween, 29, of Lanham was struck and killed at the intersection of Greenbelt Road and Southway.

*On Oct. 17, Tamami Kusuda, 78, of Rockville, was hit and killed while walking home from the Shady Grove Metro station.

*On Oct. 21, a driver who fell asleep at the wheel struck two men who were walking on Falls Road. One of the men, Gabriel Berrebi, 51, of Potomac, was flown to Baltimore Shock Trauma in critical condition. The second man, Philip H. Marks, 57, of Silver Spring, was treated for injuries at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda.

*On Oct. 24, Patrick Lucas, 15, was hit by a car as he tried to cross Randolph Road to get to John F. Kennedy High School. He was seriously injured and remains in Suburban Hospital.

October is National Pedestrian Safety Month. County officials and police have organized several events to try and educate the public about both driving and walking responsibly.

Sunday was Safe Neighborhood Day, which was spearheaded by Pam Miller of Kenwood Park. Miller launched the event in 2000 after she watched a car plow into the Volvo that her 11-year-old daughter and her father were riding in on Whittier Road. No one was seriously hurt, but the crash prompted her to take action in her community to stop dangerous driving.

"We've had all sorts of speeding on the roads," Miller said. "People are tired of people not respecting their streets."

A year after the crash, her daughter was in another crash on the same road. She was not seriously injured.

On Friday, county police will be at the corner of Georgia Avenue and Noyes Drive in Silver Spring. A plainclothes officer will walk in the crosswalk, and anyone who does not stop and yield the right of way will be pulled over and cautioned.






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