Another Pedestrian Fatality! More Stings Please.

Georgia Avenue in crosswalk at this crash site, 8/24/13.

Yet another person has been run over and killed in Wheaton.  Yesterday around 2pm a woman from DC was struck while crossing Georgia Avenue in a crosswalk just south of H Mart.  Today she died of her injuries in a hospital.

So sad and tragic.

As Patch reports, with a map of the accidents, "Twenty-two pedestrians and one bicyclist have been hit by cars in Montgomery County this year. See the map of incidents here." And here's some of my coverage from last winter.

Georgia Ave at the crash site, 8/24/13.

Perhaps this new tragic death means that the effect has warn off from the Pedestrian Traffic Stings I wrote about last April and May.  Last winter there was a series of accidents when car drivers ran over people walking.  As Patch reported, 12 collisions in the first 10 weeks of 2013.  As reported in the Examiner in June:

"Fatal pedestrian collisions in Montgomery County have almost doubled in the first six months of 2013 from all of 2012, despite the county spending millions of dollars to promote pedestrian safety.  County statistics show 11 pedestrians have died since the beginning of this year, a number officials say is concerning since pedestrian fatalities for 2012 totaled six."

I think a lot of the county money must have been spent on those pedestrian safety advertisements in bus shelters and on buses.  I think those ads are unpleasant to look at, scary, and may be discouraging people from getting outside of their cars.  Maybe the images of tire marks on peoples' faces who otherwise seem unharmed make drivers think that getting run over won't hurt.  These people don't appear hurt at all, just unhappy.

One of the ads on a Wheaton bus shelter.

MoCo should have more ticketing stings to calm
drivers and forget these ads -- the stings generated a lot of publicity so even those who weren't ticketed heard about them and learned lessons.  Drivers who just saw the stings covered on the news had to have thought twice the next day about blowing through a crosswalk when they were driving!