Pedestrian Safety as Voters Hit the Polls

Turning back our clocks means earlier sunsets and even more traffic safety risk and with people heading out to the polls today and until tonight it's very important to be on high alert on our roadways. So joining us now is Montgomery County Transportation Department Director Chris Coughlin. Chris good morning. Good morning. Let's begin with talking about the importance of not just driving safety but pedestrian safety as well. Yeah, I appreciate that. It's been a rough year in 2026. We've had 42 fatalities already on our roads this year compared to 39 in all of 2025. I know my family left this morning to work the election and they all left in the dark. So that's new, right? In November, we start to see this happen and roughly 70% of our fatal pedestrian crashes happen in the dark. October, November, and December are our deadliest months, and we're really asking people to be careful out there on the roads. Pay attention when they're walking. If you're in the dark and walking, please be aware that drivers may struggle to see you, and if you're driving on the road, You really have other people's lives in your hands, and you need to do everything you can to operate that car safely. I've always been told when you're driving, you're really driving for yourself and everybody else. You know, that includes the people who are out and about. You just have to be really vigilant at all times. Talk about Election Day specifically, because a lot of people will be walking as well, what you want people to take heed of when it comes to that. Yeah, so schools are out of session today, so you'll see a lot of kids around walking to various places that they'd otherwise be in school. Be aware of that. A lot of our voters access the polls by walking or taking transit to those polls. You need to be careful to keep your eye on them and be aware that there's going to be more pedestrian activity than you're used to. A couple of years ago, we had a fatal collision on people leaving a polling place in Gaithersburg. We really want people to be vigilant and take extra care when they're accessing that polling place, especially if they're driving near those polling places. Details now on the Street Smart campaign that's underway. Sure. This Thursday at 11 in Silver Spring, we're going to be joining all of our regional partners. This is not just an issue in Montgomery County. These trends are affecting all of us in the metropolitan Washington area. With the Council of Governments to kick off the annual Street Smart campaign, this is a promotional campaign where there's going to be print and media advertisements encouraging safe driver behavior, encouraging people to not drive impaired, encouraging people to put the phone down, to pay attention to the road, to not look at that giant display in your car. And focus on the things around you and make sure you're keeping everybody safe. So we're looking forward to kicking that off with all of our partners. It sounds like that's going to be really big. Like you said, it's even larger than Montgomery County. Finally here, can you talk about the scooters? Because we've covered a lot of stories as of late involving collisions with those as well. Yeah, the scooters are a very challenging issue. So when these scooters first arrived here in this region, they were all low-speed scooters. They could go 10 to 15 miles an hour. They were compatible with bikes on the road. Now we see a lot of different types of scooters. We see people moving at 30, 40 miles an hour in traffic on these scooters, not following traffic laws. We're actually starting to separately count scooter, e-bike, and small motorcycle collisions. And we're noticing that those are comprising a bigger and bigger share of the crashes in Montgomery County. And we really ask people to follow the rules of the road and operate these devices safely and avoid buying or operating vehicles that aren't legal. Those that can move very fast or have high horsepower are really supposed to be registered motor vehicles and not bikes or scooters. All right, Chris, thank you so much for updating us on that. The campaign and everything else is underway for Montgomery County and beyond. We appreciate it. Thank you, Steve.