SCOHTS Roundtable Reports

Maryland

April 2007

Crash Trends

  • Traffic fatalities, after having decreased from 643 in 2004 to 614 in 2005, reversed a short lived trend and increased to 652 in 2006. Although fatalities over the past 5 years have fluctuated, the numbers of persons reported as killed or seriously injured (incapacitated) have steadily dropped (2006 figures are incomplete) – a nearly 25 percent reduction between 2001 and 2005. Early fatality numbers for 2007 are encouraging.
  • Motorcyclist fatalities might have finally leveled off after years of continuous increases. Although these vehicles account for less that one-half of one percent of the states motor vehicle travel, they account for nearly 5 percent of its incapacitating injuries and 15 percent of its fatalities. Motorcyclists are 30 to 45 times more likely to be killed on a miles-traveled basis than occupants of other types of vehicles.

Strategic Highway Safety Planning

  • Maryland completed a major update of its Strategic Highway Safety Plan last fall and received federal concurrence with the process under which the update was carried out – Maryland’s original SHSP was modeled after the AASHTO led national plan and was completed in 1999. The state now is engaged in finalizing implementation plans for the highest priority strategy in each of the 14 emphasis areas/sub areas.
  • As a result of the gubernatorial change and numerous changes in cabinet level positions, it is necessary to reconstitute the SHSP Executive Committee.

Infrastructural Programs/Initiatives

  • Maryland’s Highway Safety Improvement Program Report noted that the state has a sound process for identifying “hazardous” locations along its system and is committed to working with the local agencies to develop processes for high accident location identification on their systems. Except for BaltimoreCity, all accidents are located by a paper log-mile system. The state highway system comprises 16 percent of the highway miles, carries 72 percent of the travel and accounts for 47 percent of all reported accidents, 64 percent of serious injury accidents, and 70 percent of fatal accidents.
  • As part of its program to upgrade its barriers and end treatments, Maryland will be installing its first modern cable median barriers. The first pilot will use the Brifen Safety Fence (TL-4). Subsequent pilots will use the CASS and Gibraltar barriers. When transitioning a w-beam barrier from the middle of a median to near the pavement edge (i.e., through the 12’ to 2’ area where w-beam use normally is avoided on slopes greater than 10 to 1) Maryland is experimenting with raising the height of the barrier and adding a bottom rail so as to provide an uninterrupted barrier.
  • Maryland has constructed more than 60 modern roundabouts alongits state highway system. It recently evaluated the safety performance of 19 single-lane roundabouts that replaced stop-controlled intersections and that had been in operation for at least 2 years. The before and after study found a 68 percent decrease in the overall accident rate and an 86 percent decrease in the injury rate. Whereas 11 fatal accidents occurred in the before period, no fatal has yet occurred at a Maryland roundabout. Despite an average cost of $450,000, at a 20-year expected service life, conversions to roundabouts produced a benefit-cost ration of 13 to 1. A preliminary analysis of two-lane roundabouts indicates that they typically do not produce the same crash reductions, with accident rates actually increasing at some locations.

Behavioral Programs/Initiatives

  • The Maryland Pedestrian Enforcement Initiative continues to conduct pedestrian sting operations along routes where failure to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks has been observed to be a significant problem. Enforcement is being augmented with extensive public awareness campaigns, including a regional one in the WashingtonD.C. metropolitan area.
  • Maryland has kicked off its annual Chiefs’ Challenge, a competition among state and local law enforcement agencies to implement the most visible and effective seat belt enforcement campaigns. Some 11,000 seat belt citations were issued in last year’s campaign. This program, conducted without overtime funding, along with the Pacesetters Seat Belt Use Awards program and Click It or Ticket mobilizations, largely is credited with achieving the state’s 91 percent seat belt use rate.
  • Last fall, Maryland’s Governor was featured at a press event to highlight the state’s participation in the Mid-Atlantic region Checkpoint Strikeforce, a campaign to prevent drinking and driving through the use of widely publicized sobriety checkpoints and other high-visibility enforcement efforts. Last year, Maryland conducted an average of more than three sobriety checkpoints per week. A greater emphasis this year is being placed on low-manpower checkpoints.

Joint Programs/Initiatives

  • Smooth Operator, a regional program to reduce aggressive driving that is entering its tenth year, is taking a new turn in Maryland with the designation of five corridors as priority locations for aggressive driving reduction. Changes in vehicle operating speeds will be used as an intermediate measure of effectiveness for the engineering, enforcement, and public awareness strategies that will be deployed.
  • Maryland recently repeated its evaluation of red light cameras, this time using an empirical Bayesian approach. In studying 63 camera locations along state highways, it again found that on approaches where the cameras are located total, rear-end, and side-swipe collisions increased and left-turn and right angle crashes decreased, the right angle ones by a significant 16 percent. Fatal crashes on the camera approaches were reduced nearly by half. The average societal economic accident cost reduction at the locations was calculated to be about $90,000 per year.
  • Next month, Maryland will be resuming its engineering-enforcement workshops, which have been preempted in recent years by more comprehensive traffic safety conferences. This forum will focus on important safety and operational issues and heavily involve field command and leadership personnel in the state police and highway agencies.

Miscellaneous

  • New driver distraction has been observed -- a box truck that displays back-lit billboards on each side (10’x5’) and on the rear (5’x5’) and rotates among advertisements every 10 seconds drives the busiest highways during morning, mid-day and afternoon peak hours.

For Information, contact Ron Lipps at or 410-787-4017