In Race With Traffic, Pedestrians Are Losing


By Phuong Ly
Washington Post
Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 7, 2000

Each morning, Saul Murcia has two choices on how to get to the bus stop across Georgia Avenue near Hewitt Avenue in Wheaton. He can take the longer, safer route or opt for short and risky.

Almost always, he says, he chooses danger--otherwise known as a mad dash across six lanes of Georgia Avenue, at an intersection where more than 41,000 cars whiz by daily.

Two pedestrians have been hit and killed while scurrying across that stretch of Georgia Avenue in one month, but dozens of people are still crossing without using the nearby crosswalk, which requires an extra hike of a few hundred feet. People even ran past police as they were investigating the fatalities.

"It's more straight right here; the bus stop is closer," says Murcia, a 25-year-old carpenter, breathing heavily after his run across Georgia Avenue with his red lunch cooler in hand.

Attitudes like his, police and transportation experts say, are what make stopping the number of pedestrian fatalities--which now rival the number of homicides in Montgomery County--such a vexing problem.

So far this year, 12 pedestrians have died in fatal crossings, compared with 13 homicides. Two pedestrians were killed last week, a 55-year-old man at Veirs Mill Road in Rockville on Thursday and a 58-year-old man on Connecticut Avenue in Kensington on Tuesday night.

Last year, there were 17 pedestrian fatalities and 13 homicides. Police say they expect the number of pedestrian fatalities to increase in the coming months as night falls earlier and people wear dark overcoats that make them harder to spot.

Nearly all the fatal accidents were caused by pedestrian error, and few drivers are ever cited, investigators said.

"Like everybody else in the morning, they're in a rush. They're trying to save themselves some time, and they put themselves in harm's way," said Capt. John King, of the Wheaton police district. "There's nothing that makes this road [Georgia Avenue] particularly dangerous. This could be anywhere in the metropolitan area.

"Who of us hasn't crossed a street not in a crosswalk? We're trying to be responsive, but it's hard to change behavior."

(Continued on next page)

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