There have been 14 deaths and nearly 600 incidents involving pedestrians on Montgomery County roads in 2019, according to a WTOP news report. Last December, two Montgomery County students contributed to this statistic when they were struck by vehicles near Montgomery County bus stops.
A 9-year-old Bradley Elementary School student was hit by a bus around 4 p.m. on December 12 at the intersection of Tanglewood Drive and Millwood Road in Bethesda, Maryland. The bus had just finished unloading a group of elementary school children when it struck the girl. She was rushed to the hospital that day with injuries which later resulted in her death.
The report also noted that on December 13, a Walter Johnson senior was hit by a 2018 Jeep Renegade at the intersection of Montrose Road and Bargate Court in Bethesda, Maryland. He was hit around 7:15 a.m. while crossing the street to the school bus and later sent to the hospital with serious injuries.
These back-to-back incidents and a few others caused Montgomery County parents to demand the school system to move bus stops to safer locations. In an interview with the WTOP, the county Planning Board’s vice chair Natali Fani-Gonzalez said “they are afraid their kids are going to get hit.”
As a result, Montgomery County citizens gathered for a town hall on December 14 to discuss road safety. “We are obviously going to do a few key things — number one, review all our protocols related to bus stop safety,” Chief Operating Officer of Montgomery County Public Schools,” Andrew Zuckerman said.
The Montgomery County School System plans on creating a panel of transportation experts and civilians to review school transportation safety. They will be analyzing the location of school bus stops and establishing safety protocols for students riding the bus.
Additionally, Montgomery County is one of the first counties in the U.S. to create a “Vision Zero” plan. This plan intends on preventing all fatal transportation incidents by 2030 through educating others and creating new transportation laws.
However, despite these new policies, county leaders believe that spreading awareness is the first step towards creating a safer transportation system. They believe that it is important for everyone to be mindful of basic pedestrian, bicycling and driving safety. “We need drivers to slow down and keep their eyes on the road. We need to look up from our phones, lower or turn off the volume on our earbuds and be aware of our surroundings,” Councilman Evan Glass said.
Article by Natalie Weger of Richard Montgomery High School
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons