Tackling Baltimore's traffic problem

Speed played a factor in a four-vehicle crash on Belair Road in February, which left a 68-year-old woman dead, as well as one of her grandchildren that she was driving to school.

“It was crazy,” said Lakia Watson, a bystander, at the time, “Seeing a baby out there on the ground, it was heartbreaking.”

In the first three months of this year, police reported 16 fatal crashes in the city with a total of 18 victims, and Commissioner Richard Worley pledged to do something about it.

“We’ve looked at stop lights and red lights to see if they’re synchronized,” said Worley, “We’ve looked at, ‘Does this area need a red light instead of a stop sign? What environmental changes can we make?’ and then our officers have just been going out stopping vehicles, not for petty things, but for speeding, running red lights, drifting through stop signs.”

That approach has nearly cut the rate of such incidents in half.

The department’s traffic initiative is also being praised as being a data-driven strategy.

Officers aren’t just unfairly choosing a community to crackdown on motorists.

They focus on streets and intersections where data over the last three years shows the most accidents, injuries and fatalities.

The program was scheduled to end this week, but it has been so successful that the commissioner says it will continue.

“There’s still way too much crazy driving going on around here,” said Worley, “That’s where we’re going to continue it for as long as we have to.”